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Early Risk Predictors of Girls’ Indirect Aggression from Childhood to Early Adolescence in an At-Risk Sample

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Abstract

The present study aimed first to examine the trajectories of indirect aggression among girls from disadvantaged neighborhoods from childhood (M age = 8.38, SD = .91, range = 6.58–10.25) to early adolescence (M age = 11.28, SD = .93, range = 9.33–13.83), after controlling for physical aggression. Second, it aimed to identify possible individual, family, and peer risk factors, assessed in the early school years, which predispose subgroups of girls to use indirect aggression in an intense and persistent way. Three trajectories of indirect aggression were identified: 18.9 % (n = 57) of the girls followed a trajectory that started out at the mean and then increased (“mean-increasing”), 44.5 % (n = 134) of the girls followed a trajectory that started out at the mean and then decreased (“mean-decreasing”), and 36.5 % (n = 110) of the girls followed a trajectory that started out below the mean and then decreased (“low-decreasing”). Results from univariate analyses suggest that individual, family and peer risk factors predicted membership in the subgroup of girls who use indirect aggression more frequently and increasingly. However, in multivariate analyses, only the individual factor of surgency/extraversion predicted membership in this subgroup of girls. Hostile parent–child relationships also differentiated girls in the “mean-decreasing” group from the “low-decreasing” group. Interventions aimed at changing negative temperamental tendencies and interpersonal experiences with family and peers may break the cycle that reinforces frequent and persistent use of indirect aggression.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC-37890/SSHRC- 326706) to Pierrette Verlaan and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR-82694) to Michèle Déry. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Board of the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada). Also, the first author benefitted from a doctoral fellowship (CRSH-767-2010-1459). We thank Annie Lemieux, M.Sc., for her assistance with data analysis and the participating families, teachers and research assistants.

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  1. Department of Psychoeducation, Faculty of Education, Sherbrooke University - Longueuil Campus, 150 Charles-Le Moyne Place, Bureau 200, Longueuil, QC, J4K 0A8, Canada

    Stéphanie Boutin, Pierrette Verlaan & Michèle Déry

  2. Department of Educational Fundamentals and Practices, Faculty of Education Sciences, Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada

    Anne-Sophie Denault

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  1. Stéphanie Boutin
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Correspondence to Stéphanie Boutin.

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Funding

This research was supported in part by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC-37890/SSHRC- 326706), to Pierrette Verlaan, and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR-82694), to Michèle Déry. Also, the first author benefitted from a doctoral fellowship (CRSH-767-2010-1459).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Board of the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada). All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study didn’t involve any animals.

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Boutin, S., Verlaan, P., Denault, AS. et al. Early Risk Predictors of Girls’ Indirect Aggression from Childhood to Early Adolescence in an At-Risk Sample. Sex Roles 76, 175–187 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0656-4

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