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

Prosocial/Care justification or Justice/Fair Justification was selected as the very best Justification
for a child’s Action Choice. A frequency count for the number of times across the four stories
that an Aggressive/Retribution Justification was selected as the very worst Justification for a
child’s Action Choice.
Before considering the relationship between CBVS Action Choices and Justification
Choices, I wanted to determine whether or not children’s intellectual ability would influence
their selection of Actions and Justifications. If so, I would need to account for Intellectual Ability
as a covariant for children’s Action and Justification choices. If there was no significant
variation, I would drop Intellectual Ability from further analyses in this study. The following
research question will address the issue of Intellectual Ability and children’s Action and
Justification Choices.
Question Two
Does children’s intellectual ability relate to the frequency of children’s CBVS Action Choices
(Prosocial vs. Aggressive) and Justification Choices (e.g., Justice/Fair, Prosocial/Care,
Aggressive/Retribution)?
Intellectual ability was reported as a single teacher-perceived item on the teacher
measure. Children’s categorical ability was reported as Low, Below Average, Average, Above
Average, or High. Standardized academic ability scores were not available for this study.
A Chi-Square (Ҳ 2 ) Test for Independence tested the following null hypothesis: There is
no dependency between children’s Intellectual Ability and children’s CBVS Action Choices that
are coded as either Prosocial or Aggressive. The non-significant Chi-Square (Ҳ 2 ) (3, N=632) =
123.37, p < .0001, Cramer’s V = .44, shows that there is no significant dependency between
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