Variability of responses within the aggression categories on the Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study, Children's Form

This study examined whether the procedure for combining scores to make aggression categories on the Children's Form of the Picture-Frustration Study is psychometrically sound. Subjects were 245 children from Grades 1 through 6. Their responses were rated according to the 11 kinds of responses defined in the manual (Rosenzweig, 1978c). Results indicated that most of the scores did not correlate with their corresponding categories. Thus, the way scores are combined into aggression categories may be invalid, because they seem to be combinations of very dissimilar kinds of responses to frustration. Until psychometrically sound and empirically validated ways of combining the 11 scores are determined, it is recommended that the 11 scores themselves be used for clinical and research purposes.