Measurement of antisocial behaviour in early adolescence and adolescence: psychometric properties and substantive findings

Abstract

AbstractBackground/AimsThis article describes the development of a new self‐report instrument, the Bergen Questionnaire on Antisocial Behaviour, for the measurement of antisocial behaviour in preadolescence and early adolescence, and presents a number of substantive results derived from a multiple‐cohort, longitudinal study involving 2430 Norwegian students in the 10–16‐year age range.Method/ResultsInternal consistency analyses showed that individual differences in antisocial behaviour could generally be measured more reliably in boys than in girls, at an earlier age, and with a greater number of scales. The relatively high correlation between the high‐prevalence and low‐prevalence scales indicated that students who took part in more serious antisocial acts were to a much greater extent involved in less serious offences as well. We also found substantial correlations between smoking and use of alcohol and the core antisocial scales, suggesting that such behaviour may represent a kind of norm‐breaking, antisocial behaviour in these age‐groups.ConclusionsWe concluded that individual differences in antisocial behaviour displayed substantial stability over a one‐year interval (disattenuated Pearson correlation around 0.80) and, to a somewhat lesser degree, for a two‐year interval (disattenuated correlation around 0.60) for boys belonging to the oldest cohort. For girls and for students in the younger age cohorts, the stability was somewhat lower. A set of analyses involving expected sex and age differences, differences between self‐reported arrested and non‐arrested subjects, and correlations with a number of conceptually related variables attested to the construct validity of the key scales included in the questionnaire. In sum, the new questionnaire should be a useful instrument for the study of the development, causes and correlates of antisocial behaviour in relatively young populations. Copyright © 1999 Whurr Publishers Ltd.