Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire

The Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ; Buss &

Perry, 1992) represents arevision of the Buss-Durkee
Hostility Inventory (BDHI), including revisions of
theresponse format and item content to improve clarity.
Although, as with the Buss-Durkeescale, items for 6 a
priori subscales were initially included in this measure,
item-levelfactor analyses across three samples confirmed
the presence of only 4 factors, involvingPhysical
Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility. Items
which wereincluded in a planned Resentment subscale
appeared to load with Hostility (confirmingthe relationship
between Suspicion and Resentment seen in the original BussDurkee),and the items from a planned Indirect Aggression
subscale appeared to be distributedacross the other factors.

29-items, 5-point scale from 1 (extremely uncharacteristic

of me) to 5 (extremelycharacteristic of me)

Primary Reference:
Buss AH, Perry M: The aggression questionnaire. J Pers Soc
Psychol 63:452-459, 1992.

Strengths:

Reasonable psychometric properties;

Unique apparent ability to capture all three dimensions of the

hostilityconstruct (cognitive, affective, and behavioral).

Weaknesses:

Relatively recent development, thus relatively small literature that

hasexamined its association with health outcomes, to date;

No published data, to our knowledge, examining the

comparability of theBPAQ and the Buss-Durkee from which it
was derived;

No published data examining the relative merits of the BPAQ

when comparedwith other measures for predicting
cardiovascular health.To learn more about the Buss-Perry
Aggression Questionnaire, click below:

Internal and Test-Retest Reliability

Subscales and Factor Analysis

Construct Validity

Relationship with Health Outcomes

References
Internal and Test-Retest Reliability
Internal consistency for the four subscales and total score
range from .72 (VerbalAggression) to .89 (Total BPAQ
score). Retest reliability for the BPAQ over nine weeksis
also satisfactory (correlations ranged from .72 for Anger to
.80 for Physical Aggressionand for the total score; Buss &
Perry, 1992
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