Introduction

Partner violence is one of the most important social and public health problems faced by contemporary society. The Aggression Questionnaire AQ (Buss & Perry, 1992) is one of the most popular validated self-report measures to assess physical and verbal aggression and emotions and attitudes related to aggressiveness: anger and hostility.

Objectives

This study analyzes the structure factor, internal consistency and convergent and discriminant validity of the AQ in a Spanish sample of 767 men in psychological treatment after having been convicted of partner violence.

Design/Methodology

We conducted a Confirmatory Factor Analysis, adopting the four-factor structure of the Spanish and English versions as the initial hypothesis. The goodness-of-fit indexes used to assess the CFA are: chi-square, goodness of fit index (GFI), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) and root mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA).

Results

The results of the confirmatory factor analysis support the four-factor structure of the AQ, although three items whose standardized regression coefficients were below .40 were deleted, leading to a better fit of the model (χ²(286) = 601.18, p< .000; GFI = .94; AGFI = .93; RMSEA = .04) and an improvement of internal consistency. Regarding convergent validity, the results show significant and positive correlations between the subscales and the total AQ scale and other instruments measuring aggression and anger: the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale Revised-CTS2 (Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996) and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-STAXI2 (Spielberger, 1988). Finally, the AQ presents evidence of discriminant validity, finding that physical and verbal aggression and anger decrease with age.

Conclusions

The results obtained allow us to conclude that the AQ is a suitable instrument to assess aggressive behaviors, emotions, and attitudes related to the aggressiveness of partner-assaultive men.