| Summary: | Victimization and aggression among adolescents in school settings is not a recent issue. It is however a growing problem not yet fully understood or properly evaluated. The goal of this thesis was to prepare and validate an instrument that addresses aggression, victimization and prosocial behavior in a quantitative, accessible and relatively fast format. The Revised Peer Experience Questionnaire (RPEQ) fulfills these needs since it accesses these tree constructs at once, for both aggressors and victims. For this purpose, a sample of 941 adolescent was recruited (49.1% males and 50.9% females). Participants’ age varied from 9 to 20 years old, and girls were significantly younger than boys. Regarding their school grade, 82.5% of the students attended middle school grades and 16.4% attended high school grades. Confirmatory factor analysis confirms the internal structure of the bully and victim versions of the instrument, as evaluating overt, relational and reputational aggression/ victimization and providing/ receiving prosocial behavior, respectively. This measurement model was invariant across genders, and presented adequate internal consistency and convergent validity indicators. Descriptive analysis furthermore shows that boys are more aggressive in overt and relational forms and victimized through overt aggression, whereas girls tend to be more aggressive and victimized relationally. More than any type of aggression or victimization, both boys and girls, revealed higher values for engaging and receiving prosocial behavior. Results from this research suggest that the RPEQ is a reliable and valid, structurally sound measure of aggression, victimization and prosocial behavior in this Portuguese school-based community sample. The use of this measure may assist researchers in gaining a better understanding of adolescent aggression, either performed or received, and may aid in the design of specific intervention strategies.
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