Teacher and self-ratings of popular and rejected adolescent boys' behavior

This investigation was designed to further an understanding of the differences between popular and rejected adolescent males with regard to the domains of social skills, self-control, anger, problem behaviors, and academic performance. For a multi-state sample (N = 191) of adolescents, it was demonstrated that teacher and self-ratings of social skills and self-control meaningfully discriminated popular from rejected males. Ratings of anger, problem behaviors, and academic performance did not contribute to the differentiation of the two groups via a stepwise discriminant function analysis. This investigation extended established behavioral correlates of social competency findings to older adolescents and employed several new (Social Skills Rating System) or infrequently used (Self-Control Rating Scale and Children's Inventory of Anger) behavior rating scales to operationalize social or social-cognitive behaviors hypothesized to be important to the development of social competency.