Cooperative‐ Competitive Preferences and Locus of Control of School‐Age Children

Abstract

There were two phases of the study. During the first phase, the instrument, Social Behavior Inventory (SBI) was developed to measure cooperative‐competitive preferences of school‐age children. During the second phase, the SBI was administered to 876 5th and 6th grade children. The purpose was to investigate relationships among children's cooperative‐ competitive preferences, sex, locus of control, SES, and parents' and teachers' ratings. Major findings included: 1) Spearman‐Brown reliability estimates for the SBI were high; 2) there was a low but sagnificant relationship between children's preferences and parents' perception of an ticipated children's choices for cooperative‐competitive behavior as measured by the SBI; 3) girls chose more cooperative responses and were perceived by observers to be significantly more cooperative than boys; 4) the cooperative preferences were significantly related to internal locus of control; and 5) the children's scores on the SBI were not significantly related to age, grade, or SES of parents. The validity and theoretical utility of these findings are discussed.