ADOLESCENT SOCIAL AND COGNITIVE COMPETENCE - CROSS-INFORMANT AND INTRAINDIVIDUAL CONSISTENCY ACROSS 3 YEARS

Addressed the questions of cross-informant consistency at one point in time and within-person consistency across time for ratings of adolesc ent cognitive and social competence. Harter's Perceived Competence Sca le for children (1982) was administered to 98 triads of adolescents, t heir mothers, and their teachers over a 3-year period. Results indicat e that, although mean level of perceived competence varied among the d ifferent raters, with adolescents scoring themselves lower than both m others and teachers, all correlations among the various informants at each point in time were significant. Similarly, within-person correlat ions across years, including a 2-year interval, were significant, indi cating that perceptions of cognitive and social competence are relativ ely stable over a 3-year period, even when adolescents served as infor mants.