The Brief Peer Conflict Scale: Psychometric characterization across Portuguese adolescents and young adults

Abstract

Introduction/Aims: The Brief Peer Conflict Scale (Brief PCS) measures aggressive behavior as a multidimensional construct associated with diverse forms (i.e., overt and relational) and functions (i.e., reactive and proactive). Its psychometric properties have been assessed in adolescent and young adult samples, but these groups have not been compared before. This work aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Brief PCS across Portuguese community samples of adolescents and young adults. Methods: A sample of 891 participants (54.9%) aged 12 to 25 years old (M=16.69, SD=2.97) responded to the Brief PCS. Of those, 477 composed the adolescent sample (50.7% female) aged 12 to 17 years old (M=14.30, SD=1.43) and 414 constituted the young adult sample (67.1% female) aged 18 to 25 years old (M=19.43, SD=1.5). Results: Confirmatory factor analyses replicated the four-factor measurement model (i.e., proactive overt, reactive overt, proactive relational, and reactive relational aggression) as a good fit for the adolescent and the young adult samples taken separately, though using only 16 of the original 20 items. Acceptable internal consistency values were found for all four measures. Strong measurement invariance based on age-groups (i.e., adolescents and young adults) was found. Adolescents were overall more aggressive than young adults. Conclusions: This work provides psychometric properties of the Brief PCS to measure the combinations of the forms and functions of aggression invariantly across adolescents and young adults. The Brief PCS was sensitive to detect age-based differences in the practice of aggression. Its use to explore developmental trajectories of aggression seems justifiable.