MEASUREMENT MANUAL - College of Public Health - University of ...

Parental Support for Fighting
DESCRIPTION
RESPONSE
FORMAT
INTENDED
RESPONDENTS
SCORING AND
DIRECTION
The purpose of this 10-item measure is to evaluate the students’ perception
of their parents’ support for aggressive and non-aggressive solutions as a
means of solving conflicts. The questionnaire was first used as a single scale
in the Students for Peace Project (Orpinas, Murray, & Kelder, 1999). Items
were originally obtained from focus groups with middle schools students
(Kelder et al., 1996; Orpinas et al., 2000). In other subsequent studies (e.g.,
Miller-Johnson, Sullivan, Simon, & MVPP, 2004), two subscales were
scored. One subscale consists of five items reflecting aggressive solutions to
conflict, and the other subscale of the five items reflecting peaceful solutions.
Students are asked to respond “yes” or “no” to each item based on what their
parents tell them about fighting.
0 = No
1 = Yes
Middle school students
If scored as one scale: The total scale ranges between 0 and 10, and high
score reflect more positive parental support for non-aggressive solutions. To
compute the scale, items that support aggressive solutions are reverse
coded (no = 1, yes = 0); then all items are added.
If scored as two subscales, add or compute the mean of the following items:
• Parental Support for Aggressive Solutions = items: 1, 2, 3, 5, 9
• Parental Support for Non-aggressive Solutions = items: 4, 6, 7, 8, 10
If added, each scale will range between 0 and 5; if the mean is computed,
each scale will range between 0 and 1. In both cases, high scores indicate a
stronger perception of parental support for aggressive solutions or nonaggressive
solutions, respectively.
January 2009 16