Teachers' Perceptions of Assertive and Aggressive Behavior at School: A Discriminant Analysis
To clarify empirically the definitions of aggressive and assertive behavior the investigators obtained samples of aggressive, assertive, and non-assertive-non-aggressive students from 10 public high school teachers who made nominations to the three criterion groups (ns = 30) and completed individual adjective checklists. For each nominee, data were collected on four variables: impulsivity, dependence, hostility, and grade-point average. A discriminant analysis of the data yielded two significant discriminant functions which differentiated the behavioral groups Further statistical analyses showed that differences existed in the rankings of the variables among the assertive, aggressive, and non-assertive-non-aggressive subjects. A discussion of these findings and the implications of using teachers' perceptions as a research tool follows.