Aggression and impulsivity instruments:: An examination in veterans

To gather useful and meaningful information concerning behavioral traits, instruments must be determined to be reliable and valid for the specific population in which they will be used. The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and validity of the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ; Buss & Perry, 1992), the Overt Aggression Scale-Modified (OAS-M; Coccaro, Harvey, Kupsaw-Lawrence, Herbert, & Bernstein, 1991), and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11; Barratt, 1994) in a sample of veterans. Participants included 474 veterans seeking outpatient care from 4 Veterans Affairs medical facilities in the southwestern United States. Results suggest that the AQ, BIS-11, and OAS-M can be reliably used with veterans. However, subscale scores of the BIS and AQ did not provide any additional information over the total score of these instruments. Although total scores of the OAS-M were found to be reliable, subscale scores were not. Nonetheless, information obtained from the OAS-M appeared to be qualitatively different than that from the self-report questionnaires. In summary, the overall results of this study indicate that these aggression and impulsivity instruments may be reliably used in a veteran sample.