ARTICLES
Development, Reliability, and Validity of the Children's Aggression Scale-Parent Version

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ABSTRACT

Objectives

To provide preliminary psychometric data on the Children's Aggression Scale-Parent Version (CAS-P), which assesses severity, frequency, pervasiveness, and diversity of aggressive, as distinct from nonaggressive, disruptive behaviors.

Method

The scale has 33 items representing five domains: Verbal Aggression, Aggression Against Objects and Animals, Provoked Physical Aggression, Unprovoked Physical Aggression, and Use of Weapons. The CAS-P was completed for 73 clinically referred children. Validity was evaluated dimensionally by examining the relationship of CAS-P scores to other parent and teacher rating scales, and categorically by comparing scores of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) alone, oppositional defiant disorder, and conduct disorder.

Results

The scale as a whole had excellent internal consistency (α = .93). Children with conduct disorder were rated significantly higher than those with oppositional defiant disorder, who were rated significantly higher than those with ADHD alone. The CAS-P did not distinguish clinical control children from those with ADHD only. Correlations with other rating scales provide further support for the validity of the CAS-P.

Conclusions

The CAS-P assesses distinct components of aggressive behavior and may fill a gap in that it distinguishes among various types and severity of aggressive behaviors, and the settings in which they take place.

Section snippets

PART 1: DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAS-P

To help identify the range of behaviors that characterize aggression, several commonly used scales for assessing aggression in adults (e.g., Buss and Durkee, 1957;Buss and Perry, 1992;Yudofsky et al., 1986) were systematically reviewed. Subsequently, five general areas were selected as being representative of major domains within which aggressivity is frequently manifested by school-age children. The 33-item CAS-P assesses the frequency of aggressive acts in these five separate domains: Verbal

Method

Participants and Assessment Procedures. Participants were 73 boys (n = 66) and girls (n = 7), aged 7 to 11 years, who were referred to a research program for children with externalizing behavior disorders at a major metropolitan medical center. The mean age (SD) of the sample was 9.2 (1.3) years. The sample was ethnically diverse; 40% of the children were Latino, 33% were white, 24% were African American, and 3% were of mixed or Asian ancestry.

Diagnoses for each child were made on the basis of

DISCUSSION

The CAS-P was designed to provide a measure of childhood aggression which can account for an array of factors such as severity, frequency, pervasiveness, and diversity of aggression, while being less confounded by other nonaggressive disruptive behaviors. Overall, the data indicate that the scale as a whole has excellent internal consistency and that this measure of error is at least adequate for all of the subscales. Furthermore, differentiation between diagnostic subgroups and correlations

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      The primary outcome measure was the pre-post treatment change or means at end-point as assessed by ratings on the most frequently used scales, in order of preference: specific scales for aggression: OAS (Overt Aggression Scale; Yudofsky et al., 1986), MOAS (Modified Overt Aggression Scale; Kay et al., 1988), CBCL (“aggressive behaviour” subscale; Achenbach, 1991), or other aggression scales, for example IOWA (Loney and Milich, 1982; Loney, 1987; Pelham et al., 1989a,b) and CAS (Halperin et al., 2002; Halperin et al., 2003). scales for conduct problems: Nisonger NCBRF (Aman et al., 1996, 2008), CBCL (“conduct problems” scale), Conners Rating Scale – CRS (Conners, 1989), Aberrant Behavior Checklist irritability scale (ABC; Aman et al., 1985a,b), or other behaviour disorders scales.

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    This research was supported by NIMH grant 1 RO1 MH46448 and The William T. Grant Foundation's Faculty Scholar's Award Program. Copies of the scale can be obtained upon request from Dr. Halperin.

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