title: On the psychometric properties of the aggressiveness-IAT for children and adolescents.
abstract: In research on aggression, implicit association tests (IATs) have been constructed to elucidate automatic processes involved in aggressiveness. Despite an increasing number of applications of the "Aggressiveness-IAT" in basic and applied research, the psychometric properties of this method for measuring an automatic aggressive self-concept have not been comprehensively investigated. Although the Aggressiveness-IAT has been used both as a cross-situationally consistent trait measure and as a measure to indicate situational changes, prior studies have not tested to what extent it reliably captures a stable trait vs. an occasion-specific aggressive self-concept. The present research scrutinizes the psychometric properties of the Aggressiveness-IAT by addressing two issues. First, we tested the reliability, consistency, and occasion specificity of the Aggressiveness-IAT in a longitudinal panel study with four waves and 574 Austrian school children/adolescents by applying latent-state trait (LST) theory. Second, we validated latent trait scores of the IAT vis-à-vis other measures either clearly related to aggression or not. Results demonstrate that 20-30% of the variance in children's and adolescents' IAT scores is situation-unspecific (i.e., "stable"), whereas 36-50% are situation-specific. Regarding its construct validity, the Aggressiveness-IAT is correlated with explicit measures of aggression and related constructs, but it is not associated with discriminant variables (e.g., school achievement). Implications for using the Aggressiveness-IAT are discussed in the light of these findings. Aggr. Behav. 41:84-95 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Gunnar
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lemmer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gollwitzer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Banse
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000374:Aggression; D001317:Austria; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: IAT; aggression; construct validity; implicit measures; latent‐state trait theory