Copyright Malvin Porter, Jr. 2010 - acumen - The University of ...

CHAPTER V:
DISCUSSION
How people justify their aggressive behavior has been an important topic in social
psychology research on aggression (Fraczek, 1985). Justification is defined as a cognitive
strategy that helps rationalize social behavior to be acceptable. How children justify their
behavior in the context of bully/victim problems has received little attention by investigators
(Hara, 2002). Yet, research has shown that bullying is a major social problem for school-aged
children (Olweus, 2003). Children receive well-meaning advice about how to respond when
confronted personally with bully victimization; however, there is still much to understand about
how they choose to respond and how they justify those behavioral responses.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate a new measure of children’s social reasoning
about bully victimization. The Children’s Bully/Victim Survey (CBVS) attempts to assess
children’s reasoning or justifications, which can vary as either Prosocial/Care,
Aggressive/Retribution, or Justice/Fair, for either prosocial or aggressive actions they might
choose in response to a hypothetical story about bully victimization.
The Psychometric Properties of the CBVS Rated Data
As stated in chapter IV, the initial parametric analyses for internal consistency and
correlations within stories for actions and justifications were found to be lower than anticipated.
The data were for the initial analyses were derived from children’s ratings of Action Choices and
Justification Choices on a 1 to 4 Likert scale, where 1 = Very Bad, 2 = kind of bad, 3 = kind of
good, and 4 = Very Good. Analyses of these data were thought to a richer source with more
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