Development and Initial Validation of the Adult Aggressive Behaviour Scale (AABS)

Abstract

Despite of the growing research on violent crime locally and globally, there is still a lack of a local aggression instrument in Malaysia (Abdullah et al., 2015; Ghazali & Munusamy, 2020). The objective of this study was to develop a psychometrically sound and theoretically based measure with the 3 components of aggression based on the Frustration Aggression Model. The initial 60 items of the Adult Aggressive Behaviour Scale (AABS) consists of the physical, verbal and relational components. The items were constructed based on the aggression behavior of the multiracial culture in Malaysia. The AABS was administered to a sample of 117 adults in Malaysia. Quantitative item analyses were used to eliminate and revise items. Items with corrected item-total correlations lower than .3 were eliminated. The remaining items were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis constraining the process to three factors. Preliminary evidences showed that the AABS has good internal reliability and construct validity.