Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 12, Issue 5, November 1981, Pages 667-681
Behavior Therapy

Self-control in children: Further analyses of the Self-Control Rating Scale*

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Three studies examined children's self-control, as measured by the Self-Control Rating Scale (SCRS). In Study 1, 98 randomly selected elementary school children performed persistence, delay of gratification, social perspective taking, means-ends problem solving, and verbal IQ tasks. Teachers completed the SCRS and a measure of the internalization-externalization dimension of maladjustment. Results supported the relationship between the SCRS and maladjustment, especially for externalized behavior problems, and the SCRS and cognitive social perspective taking. However, means-ends problem solving, persistence, and delay of gratification measures were not intercorrelated and were not related to SCRS scores. In Study 2, in-class observations of six behavior codes on 100 randomly selected elementary school children and teachers' SCRS ratings evidenced several significant relationships. Study 3 compared the rates of observed in-class behaviors and SCRS ratings of children referred for self-control training and matched nonreferred children. Referred children were rated significantly less self-controlled and observed to engage in significantly greater rates of several behaviors than nonreferred children. Taken together, these data question the existence of a single unitary construct of self-control, yet provide some support for the utility of the SCRS as a rating scale method of assessing children's self-control.

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    *

    This research was supported by Grant #436 0749 5236 02 awarded to the first author by the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis). Portions of the present material were prepared while the first author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I am grateful for financial support provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (#5-T32-MH14581), the MacArthur Foundation, and the Quarter Leave System of the University of Minnesota. The authors thank those research assistants who conducted the testing and the observations and the teachers and principals at Neill and Noble Schools, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Brian A. Zupan is presently at the University of California at Los Angeles.

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