Validity of Social-Cognitive Constructs

Within the last decade, researchers have focused on the narure, development, and correlates of social understanding among children. There is now a substantial body of research concerned with a number of social-cognitive abilities, as well ss evidence that these abilities may play an important role as mediators of interpersonal behavior and adjustment (4). There remain many unresolved issues, including the establishment of acceptable validity of social-cognitive constructs, for there has been relatively little research on this topic, particularly with students of elementary school age. As a result much of the theoretical work is speculative. The present experiment was undertaken to provide additional data on validity. Subjects were students in first (n = 20), third (n = 22), and fifth (n = 23) grades, who were tested individually by undergraduate psychology majors. Five measures were administered: (a) Interpersonal Problem Solving,= (b) Means-Ends Problem Solving (3), (c) Positive Justice (I), (d) Impersonal Problem Solving, and (e) the Vocabulary Test of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Higher correlations were expected among measures within the domain of social cognition (the first three measures) and between the two measures within the cognitive domain than berween measures across domains. An over-all correlational analysis was performed, and significant moderate interrelationships were found for all variables (.43 to .52). However, when grade was partialled out, relatively few significant relationships remained. Within-grades correlations among variables varied from grade to grade. Results did not confirm icitial expectations, since there were as many significant correlations across as within domains. This absence of evidence for convergent and discriminant validity is consistent with results of research undertaken with other populations (2) and provides further evidence of the importance of establishing acceptable validity of measures of social cognition to provide a more solid foundation for research

Cognition · Developmental psychology · Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal relationship · Psychometrics · Social cognition · Test (biology · Test validity · Vocabulary · Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale · Behavioral and Psychological Studies · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Education, Achievement, and Giftedness · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Development of physical and social reasoning in adolescence

  Daniel P Keating, Lawrence V Clark•Developmental Psychology•1980

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