Assessing Social Perspective-Taking in Adolescence: The Written Interpersonal Understanding Interview

The present dissertation was written within the broader framework of a research project on youth vandalism funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds, NFP 40). The project investigated the specifics of youth vandalism in Switzerland and implemented a training programme aimed at increasing participants’ social perspective-taking ability and thereby decreasing their aggressive, antisocial, and vandalistic tendencies, perspective-taking acting as a mediating variable. As no perspective-taking instrument suited for large-scale group testing based on a developmental approach existed so far, a paper-and-pencil instrument was constructed for that purpose and became the topic of the dissertation. Based on Selman’s (1980) sociomoral approach to the development of social perspective-taking, a paper-and-pencil adaptation of his Interpersonal Understanding Interview (IUI) was designed, the Written Interpersonal Understanding Interview (WIUI). Four dilemmas and integrated question sets (including 16 questions) were constructed, each representing an interpersonal domain, two of them being close adaptations from Selman’s (1980) dilemmas. The third dilemma was loosely adapted from Selman; and the fourth dilemma was a new construction better corresponding to Swiss adolescents’ experiences. Selman’s and his co-workers’ coding manual (Selman, Jaquette, & Bruss-Saunders, 1979) was translated, shortened and adapted to the application within the research project. Both the loosely adapted and the new extended dilemmas (dilemmas and question sets) underwent piloting and were modified accordingly. First attempts at content-analysis using the adapted coding manual were undertaken. In the course of that process, the coding manual was also modified. All four extended dilemmas, i.e. the two modified versions (The Friendship and Street-Ball) and the two close adaptations (Franziska’s Wish and Ping-Pong) were then implemented in a first study involving four classes of secondary school, with an n of 73 participants aged 12 to 16. Each dilemma was worked through by two classes. Results indicated that most participants received both dilemmas and question sets well, although some participants complained about having to answer so many questions. Codability of answers was high (78% and higher) for three of the dilemmas. The fourth dilemma, Street-Ball, had only 68% codable answers in one class due to a high percentage of nonsense answers. It turned out that disciplinary problems with the teacher which had already existed for some time were responsible for that result. In the other class, after presenting them a modified version of the dilemma, codability was again very high (89%). Content analysis was performed on all protocols. First interrater analyses proved very satisfactory, with average percentages of perfect agreement of 80% and more for codability, interpersonal domain, issue, Social Perspective-Taking Ability IV and level of perspective-taking. Both the dilemmas, the coding procedure and the manual were further optimised, resulting in average time of analysis of 30 minutes per protocol. A first set of dependent variables representing a perspective-taking profile was defined, to be confirmed in the main study. In the main study, all four dilemmas were implemented, using counterbalancing to control for exposure and position effects. Dilemmas were presented after the vandalism questionnaire. Due to limited resources, only the first dilemma of each testing could be analysed, i.e. The Friendship and Franziska’s Wish, respectively. A total of 468 adolescents aged 12 to 17 participated in the study. Pretest data (n=440) were used both to further characterise and select dependent variables and to perform several analyses of reliability. The final list of dependent variables included several measures of perspective-taking performance and competence as well as number of codable answers given, the latter to gain more information about participants’ writing (answering) performance. Results from interrater and intra-rater analysis showed that consistency was high both within and across raters, with average percentages of perfect agreement of 83% and higher for codability, interpersonal domain, issue, and level of perspective-taking. Internal consistency was high, both for the pretest as a whole and for separate dilemmas. And both dilemmas showed good split-half reliability. However, contrary to Selman’s (1980) assumption of the interpersonal domains as representing a structured whole, alternate form reliability was not satisfactory, resulting in significant but modest correlations. Further analyses showed that domain-specifity seems to play a certain role with dilemmas, with the parent-child dilemma (Franziska’s Wish) receiving higher perspective-taking scores than the friendship dilemma. However, when only pretest data were used, there was no systematic dilemma or dilemmagender interaction effect. Still, alternate form reliability and the relative contribution of domain-specifity deserve further investigative attention. As temporal stability could only be assessed across dilemmas (and domains) these results were also not satisfactory, even when only analysing control group data (n=176). Correlations were again significant, but modest in magnitude. Therefore, temporal stability must still be properly assessed for the WIUI, using the same dilemma for each testing. Analyses of the specifics of social perspective-taking for pretest data showed significant age, gender, and schooling effects, supporting the discriminative validity of the WIUI. Older participants performed better than younger, girls better than boys, and participants attending higher-level schools performed better than those attending lower-level schools. The significant age effect confirmed theoretical stage assumptions. The significant gender effect for perspective-taking was not found by Selman (1980) for the sociomoral approach; however, several studies outside the sociomoral approach suggest that girls outperform boys regarding perspective-taking in particular and social cognition in general (e.g. Carlo et al., Social Perspective-Taking Ability V 1999; Davis, 1980; Redmond, 1995). The significant schooling effect is a new finding and must further be confirmed. Further analyses indicated that both participants’ general verbal abilities and writing performance (number of codable answers given) were significantly related to their perspective-taking competence, and to their perspective-taking profile as a whole, respectively. Moreover, confirming earlier research, significant negative relationships were found between perspective-taking (performance and competence) and self-reported aggressive impulses, direct aggression, indirect aggression and antisocial behaviour, the latter two, however, only for the parent-child dilemma. Magnitudes of relationships were rather modest, corresponding to findings from previous research (e.g. Richardson et al., 1994; Rothenberg, 1970; see Eisenberg & Miller, 1988). No significant (negative) relationship was found between perspective-taking and self-reported vandalistic behaviour. Finally, participants’ perspective-taking exhibited perfectly corresponded to expectations based on both theoretical assumptions and empirical findings within the sociomoral approach (e.g. Gurucharri & Selman, 1982; Selman, 1980). And the vast majority of participants’ answers remained within the interpersonal domains covered by dilemmas, with the majority of answers being codable. To sum up, both the development and the implementation of the WIUI have proved very satisfactory so far, with issues of domain-specifity and alternate form reliability demanding further attention. What still needs to be done is the proper assessment of temporal stability using the same dilemma (interpersonal domain) for each testing. Social Perspective-Taking Ability VI