INVESTIGATING THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL AND ACADEMIC COMPETENCES FOR EARLY-LATE PREADOLESCENTS AND ADOLESCENTS - A MULTITRAIT-MULTIMETHOD ANALYSIS

The purposes of the study were twofold: (a) to test for evidence of co nstruct validity related to social and academic (general, English, mat hematics) competencies, as measured by self, teachers, parents, and pe ers, for children in Grades 3 (n = 175), 7 (n = 193), and 11 (n = 159) , and (b) to examine the extent to which ratings by significant others were concordant with self-ratings for these four constructs. Based on a comparison of nested multitrait-multimethod covariance structure mo dels, results demonstrated that despite evidence of global convergent and discriminant validities, method effects were instrumental in atten uating trait variances. In particular, self-ratings for early preadole scents and peer ratings for all ages were the most vulnerable to this anomaly. Overall, results suggest that researchers consider making gre ater use of parent ratings in the measurement of social and academic c ompetencies for elementary children.