On the dimensionality of the Buss/Perry Aggression Questionnaire

Buss and Perry (1992, Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 452-459) developed a 29-item test that presumably measures four aggression-related dimensions (physical aggression, verbal aggression, hostility, and anger). This study examined the factor structure of the items with particular concern towards seeing how much of the structure previously noted was an artifact of differences in item distributions. Although the scales are intercorrelated to the point that they may not span four dimensions, the scales are in fact multivariate in that the structure is not an artifact of differences in item distributions found with other presumed multifactor scales.