The Clinical Anger Scale: preliminary reliability and validity

This article reports preliminary evidence for the development and validation of the Clinical Anger Scale (CAS), an objective self-report instrument designed to measure the syndrome of clinical anger. Factor analysis of the CAS confirmed a unidimensional item structure; reliability analyses also demonstrated adequate internal consistency and test-retest stability for the CAS; other results indicated that the CAS was unrelated to social desirability influences. Additional findings indicated that clinical anger was associated positively with several anger-related concepts (e.g., trait anger, state anger, anger-in, anger-out, anger-control) and that the CAS was related in predictable ways to people's psychopathological symptoms, personality traits, and early family environments. Implications for future research and therapeutic assessment with the Clinical Anger Scale are discussed.