Caitlin Clark successfully proposed her dissertation today, an ambitious instrument development project aiming to validate a new self-report measure of relational aggression, the Young Adult Relational Aggression Scale (YARAS). Our hope is that the YARAS will ultimately prove to be a psychometrically sound means of assessing proactive and reactive relational aggression among emerging adults.

Many of the existing measures one finds in the adult relational aggression literature were adapted from measures developed with children and early adolescents. Others were developed for use in individual studies and have little evidence of reliability or validity. Still others are difficult to obtain because they were never published, have different versions without clear instructions for use, or do not distinguish between the proactive and reactive functions of relational aggression. Our hope is that the YARAS will be able to improve upon these and other limitations of existing instruments.

Caitlin is an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab who is in the process of applying for a predoctoral internship this year. With her successful dissertation proposal, she will soon be able to begin data collection.

Congratulations to Caitlin on completing this important milestone!

Tags: relational aggression, instrument development