The Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire: Translation and Preliminary Validation in a Danish Population Sample

The Buss-Perry Aggression-Questionnaire (AQ) is an American trait-aggression assessment tool. It has 29 items under four dimensions of Physical and Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility. The Short Aggression-Questionnaire (SH-AQ) is a 12-item version of the AQ. Danish translations of these questionnaires have not previously been developed, and the aim of this study was to translate and validate Danish versions of the AQ and the SH-AQ. The AQ underwent forward and back translation, review by expert committee, and pilot-testing. A general population sample of 641 participants answered a digital version of the AQ. We used confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate three structural models for the AQ, the SH-AQ, and two alternative versions with modifications to the Physical Aggression-dimension. Gender differences were analyzed using independent t-tests. The SH-AQ had better fit-parameters than the AQ, but the 12-item Alternative-SH-AQ showed the overall best model-fit. The Four-Factor structure was superior to the other models. Men had higher scores than women on all dimensions except for Hostility. While there was support for the validity of the SH-AQ and partial support for the AQ, the Alternative-SH-AQ provided the best model-fit and the highest response spread, and we recommend this version for research on aggression in Denmark.