In national surveys, parents consistently point to school safety as an important concern. One source of violence in junior high schools is fighting (“Self-Reported Characterization of Seventh-Grade Student Fights,” Journal of Adolescent Health [1998]: 103–109). To construct a knowledge base about student fights, a school administrator wants to give two surveys to students after fights are broken up. One of the surveys is to be given to the participants, and the other is to be given to students who witnessed the fight. The type of information desired includes (1) The cause of the fight, (2) Whether or not the fight was a continuation of a previous fight, (3) Whether drugs or alcohol was a factor, (4) Whether or not the fight was gang related, (5) the role of bystanders.

a. Write a set of questions that could be used in the two surveys. Each question should include a set of possible responses. For each question, indicate whether it would be used on both surveys or just on one of the two.

b. How might the tendency toward positive self-presentation affect the responses of the fighter to the survey questions you wrote for Part (a)?

c. How might the tendency toward positive self-presentation affect the responses of a bystander to the survey questions you wrote for Part (a)?