Measuring anger regulation in middle childhood through behavioural observation: a longitudinal validation

Abstract

Learning to regulate anger is an important task in childhood development, as maladaptive anger regulation has been linked to a variety of problems, including aggression and social rejection. To assess anger regulation in situ, in a previous study we developed a behavioural observation measure and demonstrated its cross-sectional construct and criterion validity in a sample of 599 children with a mean age of 8.1 years. The present study further validated the measure by demonstrating its predictive validity. About 10 months after the behavioural observation, participants were asked to imagine two anger-eliciting situations and report what they would do to get rid of their anger. Observed anger regulation strategies at T1 correlated significantly with self-reported regulatory behaviour at T2, suggesting that the behavioural observation measure is an ecologically valid approach for assessing anger regulation in middle childhood.

keywords:

• Anger regulation
• observation
• childhood
• validation
• longitudinal study

Acknowlegement

The authors would like to thank Sophia Beier for her assistance with the coding process at T2.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The research reported in this paper was funded by the German Research Foundation as part of the Graduate College “Intrapersonal developmental risk factors in childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal perspective” [grant number GRK 1668].