Abstract:

In this study, it is aimed to develop a scale which can detect the behaviors of 36-72 month-old children in times of aggressive impulse. In order to achieve this, 337 preschool children were selected by using convenience sampling method and included in the first study group. These children were attending to school in the fall semester of 2014-2015 academic year in Ankara, Antalya, Hatay, Konya and Muş provinces. Exploratory factor analysis was performed on scale forms applied to these children. As a result of the Exploratory Factor Analysis, the eigenvalue of the scale was grouped under four different factors which were higher than 1. There was no item in the scale giving load to any of the factors whereas there were 6 items giving load to more than one factor. Then, it was observed that the scale with 27 items was grouped under four factors. The first one of these four factors explained the 48.11% of the variance and it was named as “physical aggression towards others”. The second one was named as “relational aggression towards others” and it explained the 11.66% of the total variance. It was found that the third one explained the 5.25% of the total variance and it was named as “self-directed aggression” and the fourth factor was named as “aggression against objects/items” and it explained the 7.7% of the total variance. In order to determine the reliability of the scale, total correlation was tested for each item and Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients were calculated. Accordingly, the Crα of the scale was .957, the Crα of the “physical aggression towards others” subdimension was .946, the Crα of the “relational aggression towards others” subdimension was .945, the Crα of the “self-directed aggression” subdimension was .853 and the Crα of the “aggression against objects/items” subdimension was .920. Furthermore, in order to determine the criterion validity of the scale, we created a second study group which was composed of 127 pre-school children who were continuing their education in the spring semester of the 2014-2015 academic year in preschools located in the center of Ankara province. In addition to our scale, Pre-School Social Behavior Scale-Teacher Form, which was developed by Crick, Casas & Mosher (1997) and adapted to Turkish by Şen and Arı (2011), was applied to these children. The scale was composed of four subdimensions but only physical aggression and relational aggression subdimensions were used. It was found that correlations were varying between r=.340 and r=.875 subdimensions of both scales (p<0.01). All these results show that “Aggression Tendency Scale for 36-72 Months-Old Children” is reliable and valid in terms of both general and factorial respects.

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