Military-connected adolescent aggressive tendency scale: development, validity and reliability

Abstract

This study documents the development and validation of a tool to measure aggressive behaviour tendencies among adolescent children of military personnel in Nigeria. Existing scales measuring aggressive behaviour were reviewed and a qualitative study to determine prominent issues relating to aggressive behaviour and its manifestation among this population was conducted. From themes generated, those related to aggressive behaviour were utilised to construct a 28-item aggressive behaviour scale. Among 147 adolescent children of military personnel, a cross-sectional survey was carried out to test the reliability and validity of the scale. Exploratory factor analysis factored the scale into three sub-dimensions (Physical, Verbal and Relational aggression) with items loading from 0.63 to 0.80. Convergent validity was established between the Military-Connected Adolescent Aggressive Tendency scale (MAATS) and the Buss and Perry Aggression questionnaire (r= 0.583, p< .001). While divergent validity was established between the MAATS and Multi-dimensional perceived social support scale (r=0.003, p<.001). The scale yielded an adequate internal consistency of α= 0.862, a Guttmann Split half coefficient of 0.769, Test-retest reliability of 0.78 and Split-half reliability of 0.734 (form a) and 0.757 (form b) with 0.783 as correlation between the forms. The result of the statistical analyses suggests that the MAATS has adequate psychometric properties and is a reliable and valid measure of assessing aggressive behaviour tendencies among adolescents of military personnel.