Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire BPAQ
Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire BPAQ overview
Creator and Context
The Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) is a 29 item self report measure of trait aggression.
It was developed by Arnold Buss and Mark Perry and published in 1992. It is the most widely used self report aggression measure in research, and it separates aggression into behavioural, emotional and cognitive components.
Note that it is distinct from the commercially published Aggression Questionnaire by Buss and Warren, which has 34 items and is licence restricted.
Presenting Conditions
The BPAQ produces four subscales:
Physical aggression (9 items)
Verbal aggression (5 items)
Anger (7 items), the emotional component
Hostility (8 items), the cognitive component
Administration
Self administered in five to ten minutes, with no training requirement. Each item is rated from extremely uncharacteristic of me (1) to extremely characteristic of me (5). It is a trait measure with no recall window.
Desired Audience
Adults and adolescents. It was originally validated on US college students and is now used across forensic, clinical and general populations.
Anger and hostility are not the same thing, and neither is the same as hitting people. The BPAQ separates them, which matters because the treatment for a person who ruminates with resentment is quite different from the treatment for a person who explodes.
Considerations
There are no clinically validated cut off scores. Interpretation is norm referenced, not threshold based. Any high aggression above a given score claim is invented.
It is not a violence risk assessment tool and must not be used or marketed as one.
As a self report trait measure it is vulnerable to impression management, which matters in forensic and employment contexts.
Copyright rests with the publisher of the original article. Commercial redistribution should be cleared.
How to score the Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire BPAQ
Conducting the assessment
The person rates 29 items from 1 to 5. Two items are reverse scored.
Interpretation
Items are summed by subscale and in total. The total ranges from 29 to 145. Subscale ranges are physical aggression 9 to 45, verbal aggression 5 to 25, anger 7 to 35 and hostility 8 to 40.
There are no clinical cut offs. Interpretation is by comparison with sample means and percentiles.
Internal consistency in the original study was 0.89 for the total, and test retest reliability over nine weeks was 0.80.
Clinical Considerations
Read the four subscales, not the total. The profile is what has treatment implications.
Do not use it to make risk decisions. It is not a risk instrument.
Interpret with care where the person has an incentive to look better or worse than they are.
Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire BPAQ use cases
Measuring trait aggression across four components
Informing formulation in anger and aggression work
Tracking change across an anger management intervention
Research into aggression
Category
Risk Assessment
Research Summary
Buss, A. H., & Perry, M. (1992). The Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(3), 452 to 459.
Bryant, F. B., & Smith, B. D. (2001). Refining the architecture of aggression: A measurement model for the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 35(2), 138 to 167.
Gerevich, J., Bacskai, E., & Czobor, P. (2007). The generalizability of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 16(3), 124 to 136.
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Note on Assessment licensing
Some assessments are copyright protected and require a licence or the copyright holder's permission for clinical, commercial or digital use. Where that applies, obtaining and maintaining that permission is the responsibility of the practice or organisation using the assessment. Tacklit provides the digital administration, scoring and reporting. We do not grant, transfer or supply rights to the underlying instrument.
