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

intellectual ability. This measure served as a proxy measure for children’s intellectual ability and
was entered into the analyses as a statistical control. It was important to statistically control for
children’s intellectual ability because previous research has found that children of lower
intelligence are more likely to be physically aggressive with peers than children of higher
intelligence (Dodge, 1986).
Dodge (1986) posited that children’s social information processing skills are determined
at least in part by intelligence. Recent research finds that adaptive emotion-regulation strategies,
aggressive-response generation, and problem-solving response generation are all related to
adolescents’ intelligence. In contrast, hostile attribution of intent is not related to intelligence
(Nas, De Castro, & Koops, 2005).
Given that previous research finds that intelligence is related to aggressive response
generation and problem solving, it is likely that intelligence is related to actions children say they
would take if they were a victim of bullying or a bystander witness to bullying. Similarly, it is
possible that intelligence is related to the justifications children give for their actions in response
to bullying by another child. Therefore, the relationships between teacher perceptions of
children’s intelligence and children’s action choices and justification will be examined. If these
relationships were statistically significant, then teacher perceptions of a child’s intelligence
would have been entered as a covariate in all analyses.
Data Analyses
What are the psychometric properties of the Children’s Bully Victim Survey (CBVS)?
The reader is reminded that for each of the four stories on the CBVS, children rated a list of
Prosocial Action Choices and Aggressive Action Choices on the basis of how “good” they are as
behavioral responses to bulling. Ratings ranged from 1 = “very bad” to 4 = “very good.” Means,
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