A parent questionnaire for distinguishing between reactive and proactive aggression in children.

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that reactive and proactive aggression can be distinguished on the basis of teacher-rating scales. In this article a newly developed parent-rated questionnaire that aims to distinguish between reactive and proactive aggression is evaluated with regard to its structure and validity.
METHOD: In study 1, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the data of 442 children aged 6-12 years of a general population. Study 2 examined the relations between the two forms of aggression and hostile intentions, expected outcome of aggression, ADHD symptoms and callous-unemotional traits in a sample of 40 normal and 40 disruptive behaviour disordered boys aged 8-12 years.
RESULTS: The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the two-factor model, unlike a singlefactor model, produced a reasonable fit to the data. The results of study 2 showed that the correlations between the different variables and reactive aggression differed from the correlations with proactive aggression in ways that were consistent with theoretical definitions and earlier findings.
CONCLUSION: These results, in addition to those of earlier studies using teacher-rating scales, suggest that it is possible to make a valid distinction between reactive and proactive aggression using this newly developed parent-rated questionnaire.