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REFINEMENT OF THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCHOOL ANGER INVENTORY

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Refinement of the Multidimensional School Anger Inventory:Further Construct Validation, Extension to Female Adolescents, and Preliminary Norms

Youth anger and the associated constructs of hostility and aggression are of considerableinterest to both researchers and practitioners in school psychology and counseling (see Goldstein& Conoley, 1997; Larson et al. book chapter). Given continuing concerns with violence in

school settings (Astor, Behre, Fravil, & Wallace, 1997; Brenner, Simon, Krug, & Lowry, 1999;Furlong, Morrison, & Pavelski, 2000; Kaufman, Chen, Choy, Chapman, Rand, & Ringel, 1998;Kingery, Coggeshall, & Alford, 1998), there is a need to identify students experiencing anger-related problems and to develop effective intervention strategies to increase their capacity tomanage anger-related behaviors and cope more effectively with interpersonal conflicts. TheMultidimensional School Anger Inventory (D. C. Smith, Furlong, Bates, & Laughlin, 1998) wasdesigned to assess affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of anger specific to thegeneral school setting and context. The original 31-item scale, developed for males in grades 6to 12, demonstrated positive psychometric properties with regard to internal consistency andconstruct and concurrent validity. A principal components analysis supported the hypothesizedfour-factor structure of the scale, which included subscales measuring Anger Experience,Hostile/Cynical Attitudes, Destructive Expression, and Positive Coping. Encouragingly, each ofthe subscales emerged as measuring a relatively independent aspect of the general construct of

anger in adolescent males.In subsequent studies (Bowman, 19xx; Furlong & D. C. Smith, 1998) the MSAI has

proven to be useful in identifying subgroups of students manifesting anger-related needs withinschool settings. The Furlong and D. C. Smith (1998) analysis supported an empirically-basedtypology of anger responses in males that included both normal variation clusters and distinctivepatterns of anger-related problems at school. The resulting typology has important implicationsfor making clinical diagnoses, screening for prevention programs, and for evaluating interventionefforts.

Despite these promising findings, there is a need to confirm the MSAI structure for malesand to explore its relevance for females in order to enhance its usefulness as a diagnosticinstrument and to establish its utility as an outcome measure for school-based anger and conflictmanagement efforts. In this study we explore three aspects of refining the MSAI for use withadolescents. First, we sought to determine the extent to which the original factor structure andpsychometric properties of the scale could be cross-validated with a larger sample of adolescentmales. The original sample of 202 males had limited generalizability due to its size and the factthat a majority of the students attended a parochial school in Hawaii.

Secondly, we were interested in the anger experiences and responses of female studentsin schools settings. Although anger, and particularly aggression, have been mainly viewed as acharacteristically male response pattern (and justifiably so given the prototypical perpetrators ofextreme violence on school campuses; see Brenner et al, 1999; Furlong, Pavelski, & Saxton, inpress) there has been recent interest in understanding the female anger experience (Crick, 1996;Crick & Dodge, 1996). This literature suggests that although females may experience anger tothe same extent as males, they differ in terms of the means by which it is expressed. Rather thanrelying upon physical aggression or other more direct forms of anger expression, femalescharacteristically employ indirect or passive-aggressive strategies as a means of expressing

anger and associated frustration. One purpose of this study was to determine whether the factorstructure of the MSAI obtained for males accurately reflected females anger, hostility andaggression at school.

Finally, we wanted to determine the stability of the MSAI subscale scores over time. It isimportant to understand the extent to which youths anger-related problems in school settingsmight be best viewed as fairly stable, immutable dispositions or more situationally determinedresponses that vary over time. In the context of school, we were particularly interested in beingable to identify the needs of students who may manifest chronically high levels of anger,hostility, and aggression. If the MSAI is to prove useful as a diagnostic instrument for thispurpose, it must demonstrate a reasonable degree of score stability over time.


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3The original development of the MSAI was based on the three-component model of the

global anger process that involves an emotional-affect component, a cognitive hostile-cynicismcomponent, and an expressive component. We purposefully used a process to select items foreach subscale that would result in high within-scale item-total correlations and low between-scale item-total correlations. Based on the three-component model of anger, we anticipated thatthis would produce three unique sets of items having some semblance of unidimensionality to

them. What we found, however, was that anger expression was not a unidimensional construct.In retrospect, this should not have been surprising since anger expression represents a complexclass of behaviors encompassing a broad range of responses to anger experiences. Specifically,we found that MSAI expression items comprised two domains, which we called DestructiveExpression (including aggressive and suicidal or self-injurious responses) and Positive Coping(including more socially acceptable responses).

The next steps in the refinement of the MSAI include: (a) cross-validating its factorstructure with an independent sample of males and (b) exploring its validity for femaleadolescents. In addition, it was of interest to improve the psychometric properties of the twoAnger Expression subscales due to moderate-sized alpha coefficients found among samples inthe previous studies. Finally, there is a need for the computation of preliminary norms forresearch, evaluation, and clinical purposes. Given these next steps, the analyses in the currentstudy addresses the following research questions:

1. Does the four-factor structure reported in the original development of the MSAI cross-validate across an independent sample of males? (Analysis 1)2. Does the original MSAI factor structure hold for a sample of female adolescents?

(Analysis 1)3. Do males and females obtain comparable scores on the MSAI subscales? (Analysis 1)4. Can the anger e xpression subscales (Destructive Expression and Positive Coping) be

refined to improve their psychometric characteristics? (Analysis 2)5. Do any subscale refinements cross-validate to independent samples of males and

females? (Analysis 3)6. What are the preliminary norms for the refined MSAI? (Analysis 4)7. What is the stability of the MSAI over time? (Analysis 4)

MethodParticipants and Response Verification

Data were obtained from 1,589 students in grades 912 attending a comprehensive publichigh school in central California, who were administered the MSAI as part of a school safetyneeds assessment. Because the primary purpose of this study was to explore and refine thepsychometric properties of MSAI, it was essential that all items have valid responses. Forty-eightparticipants were eliminated because they did not indicate their gender and eight were eliminatedfor failure to indicate their age level. In addition, each response sheet was read by an opticalscanner and then individually reviewed and verified. This allowed for the accurate recording ofitems in which responses might have been changed (i.e., an initial response was crossed out andanother response clearly given) and to examine any items with multiple responses. Once these

data were verified and transferred to an SPSS database, each item was examined for missingresponses. In most cases, missing responses were due to the fact the student did not have enoughtime to complete all of the items in the questionnaire. Our approach was to use a backward-elimination strategy by removing cases in which the last item was incomplete and then precedingto the next to last item, and so on. Using this strategy, it was found that 90 students did notcomplete the last item. Once these cases were deleted from the database, no single itemcontributed more than 90 cases with missing responses; in fact, only eight cases were eliminateddue to missing responses on any of the questionnaires first 10 items.

The version of the MSAI used in this investigation also included three items designed to


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4assess response consistency. These three items assessed a students reluctance to admit to angryfeelings (Somebody punches you for no reason at all; Somebody grabs your lunch bag andthrows in on the roof of the school; and In the restroom, somebody trips you on purpose andeveryone starts to laugh at you.) Examination of responses to these items indicated that onlyone student responded to all three response-check items by indicating that these situations wouldnot evoke any angry feelings. An additional 20 students responded in this way to two of the three

response check items. The average score of these 21 students for the 13 Anger Experience items(25.1) was compared to that of the remaining students (31.3) and was found to be significantlylower, t (1,186) = 3.81, p = .0001. This shows that these students, as expected, under subscribedto angry affect. Due to concerns about response bias, these 21 students were not included infurther analyses.

Insert Table 1 about here

-After the data management procedures were completed, there remained a total of 1,166

cases with complete responses for all MSAI itemsthese students were included in subsequentanalyses. Characteristics of these students are shown in Table 1. There were comparablenumbers of males and females and adequate representation across grades 9 to 12. The sample

consisted of 62% white students, with about 27% being from a diverse representation of racialor ethnic backgrounds including biracial youths. Ten percent of the students declined to identifytheir racial or ethnic background.

MeasuresMultidimensional School Anger Inventory

In the initial development of the MSAI (D. C. Smith et al., 1998), items werepurposefully selected to maximize item-total correlations within each subscale and minimizeitem-total correlations between subscales. Items from the original item pool that weresignificantly correlated with the composite score of one or more other subscales were eliminatedfrom the scale. The objective was to develop an instrument that provided relatively independent

measures of the three components of anger assessing the tripartite of affect, cognitions, andbehavior. The instrument construction process was consistent with conceptual definitions ofanger (e.g., Speilberger,Johnson et al., 1985)A-H-A [anger-hostility-aggression]) and wasidentified as an example of good practice by Goodwin and Goodwin (1999) in a review of scaledevelopment procedures. Although the original analyses of the MSAI yielded promising results,the samples used in its initial development were small and consisted exclusively of maleadolescents. There was a need, as in all scale development, to replicate the factor structure of theMSAI across independent samples and, further, to extend its utility by exploring its validity forfemale adolescents.

Procedure

Prior to collecting data for this confirmation and extension study, it was recognized thatwe wanted to develop parallel items in an effort to bolster the reliability of the subscales, assuggested by Smith and McCarthy (1995). This was particularly true of the anger expressionsubscales. Trial parallel items were drafted and presented to focus groups of adolescents andgraduate students in school psychology for feedback about their meaningful representation ofaspects of anger expression. This process resulted in the addition of five trial parallel items foruse in the extension analysis of this study (Analysis 2). Original and trial items are presented inTable 2.


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The site school counselor and health class teachers administered the MSAI with trialitems to students as part of a school-wide conflict management program. The survey wascompleted in September 1998 to all students in attendance on the administration day. The MSAI

itself was printed on one page (two-sided) using a machine readable response format designed bythe authors using Teleform software. In addition, the following March 1999, the MSAI wasreadministered to 508 youths to gather information about the stability of its scores.

Results

Analysis 1: Confirmation of the Factor Structure of theOriginal MSAI and Extension to Females

A subsample of 176 males and 192 females was drawn from the total sample of 1,166adolescents for this analysis using random case selection procedures in the SPSS program (the

subsamples used in the subsequent analyses were mutually exclusive). The responses of theseyouths to the original 31 MSAI items (the refinement items were ignored in Analysis 1) wereevaluated using principal components analyses with varimax rotation for purposes of examiningthe factor structure with an independent sample of males and cross-validating its factor structurefor females. Results of this analysis are presented in Table 3 and show that the four factorsreported in the original MSAI study (D.C. Smith et al., 1998) were replicated for the subset ofmales in this study. Within-scale factor loadings for each of the four MSAI subscales weresubstantial (.46 to .72). These factors accounted for 46.4% of the common variance.


-Results of the principal components analysis with varimax rotation for the female

subsample showed that the original four factors also emerged unchanged. Within-subscale factor

loadings for the females were all substantial, ranging from .39 to .77. These four factorsaccounted for 39.8% of the common item variance. One specific outcome was that the PositiveCoping subscale was not as strongly replicated for females. Four of the original seven items(Nos. 21, 24, 27, and 30) had high loadings (.48 to .69), but three other items (Nos. 22, 26, and29) had lower loadings (.26 to .36). In addition, the Destructive Expression and Positive Copingsubscales had lower alpha coefficients for females than males. In summary, the factor structureof the MSAI was maintained for female adolescents but was not as robust. Nonetheless, giventhe utility and convenience of having a single version of the MSAI, these minor differences donot appear to warrant separate male and female versions of the scale.

In an effort to further investigate the nature of gender differences in anger and angerexpression, independent t-test analyses were conducted to determine whether males and femalesscored differently on the four subscales. Results indicated that females, on average, scoredhigher on Positive Coping, t (366) = 7.69, p = .0001, and lower on Hostility, t (366) = -3.96, p =

.0001. This finding is congruent with the results of other studies investigating gender differencesin anger-related behaviors and cognitions (Furlong, Chung, Bates, & Morrison, 1995).

In summary, the results of Analysis 1 provide evidence that the MSAIs four-factorstructure was replicated for males and was substantially the same for female adolescents. On thewhole, females harbor less hostility toward experiences in the school context than males andappear to endorse more positive coping strategies as a means of managing or expressing angryfeelings. The Anger Experience and Hostility subscales, as in the original study (D. C. Smith etal., 1998), had the highest alpha coefficients. In contrast, the Positive Coping and Destructive


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6Expression scales had only moderate alphas, suggesting the need to bolster the two angerexpression subscales by adding parallel items (see G. T. Smith & McCarthy, 1995). This waspursued in Analysis 2.

Analysis 2: Item Refinement of the MSAI

As discussed in the Procedures section, parallel items were written for possible inclusionin the Destructive Expression and Positive Coping subscales. This was of particular importancebecause in the preliminary development of the scale we found that these subscales had lowerreliabilities than the Anger Experience and Hostility subscales. For the purposes of Analysis 2,the five parallel items were included with the original 31 MSAI items in a principal componentsanalyses with varimax rotation using a second randomly selected subsample of 416 students.Male (n = 198) and female (n = 195) respondents were combined into a single sample due to theconfirmation ofidenticalfactor structures in Analysis 1. In addition to contributing to therefinement of the MSAI by including parallel items, the principal components analysis withvarimax rotation provided yet another opportunity to replicate the factor structure with anindependent sample.

Insert Table 4 about hereResults of Analysis 2 again strongly replicated the MSAIs original four-factor structure

with all intra-scale loadings between .43 and .72 (see Table 4). The only item with an inter-factorloading above .40 was Destructive Expression item No. 35 (When Im mad at a teacher, I makejokes in class to get my friends laughing), which had a loading of .44 on the Hostility subscale.Alpha coefficients for Anger Experience, Hostility, and Destructive Expression were all above.78. Positive Coping again had the lowest reliability coefficient (.65). The five parallel itemsincluded in this analysis all had substantial loadings on existing factors. Item Nos. 33 (.66), 34(.63), 35 (.44), and 36 (.55) all were added to Destructive Expression and item No. 32 (.45)loaded substantially on Positive Coping.

In summary, Analysis 2 lent further credibility to the four-factor structure of the MSAI,while improving the reliabilities of the anger expression scales by adding parallel items.

Analysis 3: Cross-Validation of the Refined MSAI

This analysis was completed with a third randomly selected sample of 416 youths(females, n = 203; males, n = 202) from the original 1,166 youths. This analysis provided anindependent test of the factor structure for the 36 items included in the refined MSAI with acombined sample of males and females. Again, a principal components analysis with varimaxrotation was performed on the original MSAI items and five trial items (see Table 5).


As in Analyses 1 and 2, the within-scale loadings were all substantial ranging from .41 to.68. The alpha coefficients for Anger Experience, Hostility, and Destructive Expression were allabove .80, with a lower reliability for Positive Coping (.67). In this analysis, the only item withan inter-item loading above .40 was Anger Experience item No. 5 (You ask to go to thebathroom and the teacher says, no), which had a loading of .44 on the Hostility subscale.

Analysis 4: Final Factor Structure and Preliminary Norms


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The results of the first three analyses provided evidence supporting the underlying four-factor structure of the MSAI. To aid researchers and practitioners who want to use the MSAI,we computed a principal components analysis with varimax rotation for the 36-item refinedMSAI using the responses of all 1,166 students. The item loadings are shown in Table 6. Noneof the items had an between-subscale loading greater than .40, which reflects our successful

attempt to develop subscales that independently assess the triad of anger constructs: affect,cognitions, and behavior. Consistent with scale development strategy, all within-scalecorrelations were nonsignificant except for the correlation of .56 between Hostility andDestructive Expression. This indicates that students who reported higher levels of cognitivehostility were more likely than were their less hostile peers to report that they expressed theiranger in outward, destructive ways.


-The previous analyses using subsamples of students found some meaningful differences

in the subscale means for males and females. In addition, prudent use of any instrument shouldtake into consideration developmental (age) and cultural influences on responses to items. Toassess these factors, analyses were completed to compare the subscale means by gender (female

male), grade level (grades 9, 10, 11, and 12), and racial or ethnic identification (whiteracial/ethnic minority). As shown in Table 7, there were no mean subscale scores differences acrossgrade level or by racial/ethnic identity. For males and females differences between the meansubscale scores for Anger Experience and Hostility were nonsignificant. In contrast, males hada higher mean score on Destructive Expression and females a higher mean score on PositiveCoping (refer to Table 7 for statistical tests).


In order to provide researchers with preliminary normative data, the combined responses

of all 1,166 youths included in this study were tabulated and distribution characteristics wereestablished. Figure 1 shows the score distribution of the four MSAI subscales. AngerExperience, Hostility, and Positive Coping are roughly normally distributed. Destructive

Expression is positively skewed with the majority of students acknowledging low rates ofdestructive reactions when angry.

In addition, we were able to obtain test-retest data for 508 youth. These stabilitycoefficients are also reported in Table 7 and verify that students responses were moderatelystable over a six-month period of time regardless of gender, age, or racial/ethnic identification.These coefficients ranged from .47 (for racial/ethnic minority respondents on Positive Coping) to.73 (grade 10 respondents on Destructive Expression).

Insert Figure 1 about here

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Discussion

Taken as a whole, the results of analyses reported in this study provide convincingsupport for the conceptual structure of the Multidimensional School Anger Inventory and itsutility as an assessment tool for both male and female adolescents. In following therecommendations of G. Smith and McCarthy (1995) for best practices in clinical scaledevelopment, we sought to examine (a) the dimensionality of the MSAI across subscales, (b) thecontent homogeneity of the MSAI subscales, and (c) the internal consistency of the MSAIsubscales. In addition, we wanted to determine the extent to which the MSAI, as currentlyconceived, adequately assessed the anger experiences, cognitions, and behaviors of a broad range


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8of students varying in gender, age, and ethnicity.

With regard to the question of the dimensionality of the MSAI across its subscales, theset of analyses reported here offer further evidence in support of a four-factor structure thatincludes an affective (Anger Experience) component, a cognitive (Hostility) dimension, and twoaspects of anger expression, which we labeled as Destructive Expression and Positive Coping.The fact that this structure was replicated within three independent samples of students in the

current study attests to the robustness of the original factor solution. The answer to the questionof: Does the original four-factor structure reported in development of the MSAI cross-validateacross independent samples of students, is overwhelmingly yes.

In terms of homogeneity of content of MSAI subscales, our data suggest that within eachof the four content domains sampled by the scale, all individual items contributed uniquely andsubstantially to total subscale scores. Within-scale factor loadings across each of the samplesincluded ranged from .39 to.77. Homogeneity of subscale content is also evidenced by the factthat alpha coefficients for the four subscales identified in this research ranged from .59 to .88across the various samples studied. As an example of how a specific subscale score mightprovide a useful and relatively independent measure of one aspect of anger, we have used theMSAI Hostility subscale alone in studies examining violence victimization in school settings.

These studies have shown that students with high scores on the Hostility subscale are 20 timesmore likely to report that they have been victimized at school, are less well-connected or bondedto adults at school, and are more aware of drugs, gangs, and weapons on school campuses(Bates, Chung, & Chase, 1997; Furlong, Chung, Bates, & Morrison, 1995; Furlong, Casas,Corral, Chung, & Bates, 1997).

Limitations and Next Steps

The answer to the question of whether the MSAIs four-factor solution applies equallywell to females and to students differing according to ethnicity, developmental level and othersalient characteristics is somewhat more complex. Related to this is whether the psychometriccharacteristics of the subscales can be improved by further refinement of items. Our data suggest

that both the Anger Experience and Hostility dimensions as presently conceived adequatelyrepresent females affect and cognitions with regard to anger at school. With regard to angerexpression, however, the findings are less conclusive. Four of the five items that were added tothe original MSAI loaded on the Destructive Expression subscale and these additional itemsincreased the reliability of this subscale for both males and females. Although it is clear from ourdata that females are less likely than males to endorse aggression and other destructive strategiesfor expressing anger at school, it does not appear that the content of the scale is less viable forboth males and females.

In the case of Positive Coping, despite the addition of one item explicitly designed tomeasure an aspect of coping purportedly preferred by females, this factor did not emerge asclearly in the female samples. Our sense is that nonaggressive anger responses are complex anddifficult to classify and interpret. For example, if someone reports that they exercise when theyare angry, is this good or bad? Is this suppressing their anger or positively coping with it? Upon

further reflection it appears that Positive Coping may encompass a wide range of copingresponses including suppression/distraction, withdrawal, problem solving, and emotionalmanagement. More work is needed to clarify the types of responses characteristic of coping withanger in school-age populations and the extent to which each of these differs according togender. In the meantime, practitioners interested in adding to their anger assessment resourceswill want to examine the Childrens Inventory of Anger (Nelson & Finch, 2000; PediatricAnger Experience Scale, the Aggression Scale (Buss & Perry, 19xx) and the ChildrensHostility Inventory (Kazdin)

On a similar note, much more work is needed to explore the relevance of the MSAI and


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9similar scales with students differing according to ethnicity, cultural background and otherimportant characteristics. Although we found no significant differences in MSAI subscale scoresbased on the ethnic distributions included in this set of analyses, our samples did not include alarge proportion of ethnic minority students and did not specify the particular ethnic identity ofstudents within this grouping. One specific expectation, for example, based upon the conflictresolution literature (reference) is that Asian-American students as a group would be more likely

to engage in negotiation and other problem-solving strategies as a response to provocation thanstudents from other ethnic backgrounds.Another highly salient student characteristic relevant to the work of clinicians working

within schools is the degree of anger and frustration experienced by students manifestinglearning and behavior problems at school. We are currently collecting data with the MSAI andother instruments in an effort to understand the anger-related emotions, cognitions, and behaviorsof students identified as requiring mental health/special education services. The results of thisand previous studies that have developed and refined the MSAI provide evidence of itsreliability, validity and stability. It current has potential for use as part of a comprehensiveschool-based social-emotional assessment. In this capacity it would prudently be used as part ofa cross-informant evaluation by adding information about how the student himself or herself

experiences anger at school. In addition, the MSAI can be used in of evaluations of school-based conflict mediation programs and anger management programs. The degree to which theMSAI can prove relevant to understanding the needs of these students will go a long way towarddetermining its utility as both a diagnostic and assessment tool in school settings.

References

Astor, R. A., Behre, W. J., Fravil, K. A., & Wallace, J. M. (1997). Perceptions of schoolviolence as a problem and reports of violent events: A national survey of school social workers.Social Work, 42(1), 55-68.

Brenner, N. D., Simon, T. R., Krug, E. G., & Lowry, R. (1999). Recent trends inviolence-related behaviors among high school students in the United States. Journal of the

American Medical Association, 282, 440-446.Buss, A., & Perry, (19xx).Crick, N. R. (1996). The role of overt aggression, relational aggression, and prosocial

behavior in the prediction of childrens future social adjustment. Child Development, 67, 2317-2327.

Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1996).Furlong, M. J., J. M. Casas, Corral, C., Chung, A., & Bates, M. (1997). Drugs and

school violence. Education and Treatment of Children 20(3): 263-280.Bates, M., Chung, A., & Chase, M. (1997). The California School PsychologistFurlong, M. J., A. Chung, Bates, M., & Morrison, R. (1995). Who are the victims of

school violence? Education and Treatment of Children 18(3): 282-298.Furlong, M. J., Pavelski, R., & Saxton, J. (in press). Thinking strategically about the

prevention of school site violence. In P. Lazarus & S. Brock (Eds.), Crisis book.Washington, DC: National Association of School Psychologists.

Furlong, M. J., & Smith, D. C. (1998). Raging Rick to tranquil Tom: An empiricallybased multidimensional anger typology for adolescent males. Psychology in the Schools, 35,229-245.

Floyd, F. J., & Widaman, K. F. (1995). Factor analysis in the development andrefinement of clinical assessment instruments. Psychological Assessment, 7, 286-299.

Furlong, M. J., Chung, A., Bates, M., & Morrison, R. (1995). Who are the victims ofschool violence? Education and Treatment of Children, 18, 282-298.

Goldstein, A. P., & Conoley, J. C. (1997). Student aggression: Current status. In A. P.


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10Goldstein & J. C. Conoley (Eds.), School Violence Intervention: A Practical Handbook (pp. 3-45). New York: Guilford.

Goodwin, L. D., & Goodwin, W. L. (1999). Measurement myths and misconceptions.School Psychology Quarterly, 14, 408-427.

Kaufman, P., Chen, X., Choy, S. P., Chapman, C. D., Rand, M. R., & Ringel, C. (1998).Indicators of school crime and safety, 1998 (NCES 98-251/NCJ-172215). Washington, DC: U.S.

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evidence from four national surveys. Psychology in the Schools, 7(2), 137-157.Smith, D. C., Furlong, M. J., Bates, M., & Laughlin, J. D. (1998). Development of the

Multidimensional School Anger Inventory for males. Psychology in the Schools, 35, 1-15.Smith, G. T., & McCarthy, D. M. (1995). Methodological considerations in the

refinement of clinical assessment instruments. Psychological Assessments, 7, 300-308.Rubey, R. N., Johnson, M. R., Emmanuel, M. R., Naresh, L. R., & Lydiard, R. B. (1996).

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Gelkopf, M. (1997). Laboratory pain and styles of coping with anger. Journal ofPsychology, 131, 121-123.

Forgays, D. K., Richards, J. C., Forgays, D. G., Sujan, S. (1999). Examination of theAHA! Illness relation to male and female university students from Australia, India, and theUnited States. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 6, 64-77.

McFall, M. E., Wright, P. W., Donovan, D. M., & Raskind, M. (1999). Multidimensionalassessment of anger in Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. ComprehensivePsychiatry, 40, 216-220.

Tescher, B., Conger, J. C., Edmondson, C. B., Conger, A. J. (1999). Behavior, attitudes,and cognitions of anger-prone individuals. Journal of Psychopathology & BehavioralAssessment, 21, 17-139.

Larson, J. (in press)Nelson, M. W., Hart, K. J., & Finch, A. J. (1993). Anger in children: A cognitive

behavioral view of the assessment-therapy connection. Journal of Rational-Emotive &Cognitive Behavior Therapy, 11, 135-150.

Feindler, E. L. (1995). Ideal treatment package for children with anger disorders. In H.Kassinove (Ed.), Anger disorders: Definition, diagnosis, and treatment (pp. 173-195).Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis.

Fryxell, D. R. K. (1998). Risk factors associated with chronic anger, hostility, andaggression in preadolescent youth. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences& Engineering, 58(7-B), 3944.

Spielberger, C. D., Johnson, E, H., Russell, S. F., Crane, R. J., Jacobs, G. A., & Worden,T. J. (1985). The experience and expression of anger: Construction and validation of an angerexpression scale. In M. A. Chesney & R. H. Rosenman (Eds.), Anger and hostility in anger andcardiovascular disorder (pp. 5-30). New York: McGraw-Hill/Hemisphere.

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Table 1Descriptive characteristics of the combined sample (N = 1,166)

N %

Females 590 50.6Males 576 49.4

Grade 9 352 30.2

Grade 10 290 24.9

Grade 11 267 22.9

Grade 12 257 22.0

White 729 62.5

Racial or ethnic minority 319 27.4

Race or ethnicity missing 118 10.1


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12Table 2Original 31 MSAI items and five trial refinement items (denoted by asterisks)__________________________________________________________________________Anger Experience SubscaleResponse Scale (using line-drawn face icon depicting different levels of anger intensity):1 = I wouldnt be mad at all 2 = Id be a little angry

3 = Id be pretty angry 4 = I would be furious__________________________________________________________________________1. You didnt notice that someone put gum on your seat and you sit on it.2. At school, two bigger students take something of yours and play keep away from you.3. You tell the teacher that you are not feeling well but she/he does not believe you.4. Someone in your class acts up, so the whole class has to stay after school.5. You ask to go to the bathroom and the teacher says, no.6. You go to your desk in the morning and find out someone has stolen some of your schoolsupplies.7. Someone in your class tells the teacher on you for doing something.8. You get sent to the principals office when other students are acting worse than you are.9. The teachers pet gets to do all of the special errands in class.10. Somebody cuts in front of you in the lunch line.

11. You are trying to do your work in school and someone bumps your desk on purpose and youmess up.12. You study really hard for a test and still get a low grade.13. Somebody calls you a bad name.___________________________________________________________________________

Hostility SubscaleResponse Scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly Disagree____________________________________________________________________________14. School is worthless (junk).15. School is really boring.16. Grades at school are unfair.17. There is nothing worth learning at school.

18. Rules at school are stupid.19. Adults at school dont care about students.____________________________________________________________________________

Anger Expression Subscale (DE = Destructive Expression; PC = Positive CopingResponse Scale (Frequency): 1 = Never 2 = Occasionally 3 = Often 4 = Always____________________________________________________________________________20. When Im angry, Ill take it out on whoever is around. DE21. I talk it over with another person when Im upset. PC22. When I get angry, I think about something else. PC23. When Im mad, I hate the world. DE24. When I get mad at school, I share my feelings. PC

25. When Im mad, I break things. DE26. Before I explode, I try to understand why this happened to me. PC27. When Im upset, I calm myself down by reading, writing, painting, or some similar activity.PC28. I get so mad that I want to hurt myself. DE29. If something makes me mad, I try to find something funny about it. PC30. When Im mad, I let my feelings out by some type of physical activity like running, playing,etc. PC31. If I get mad, Ill throw a tantrum. DE


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13*32. When Im angry, I cover it up by smiling or pretending Im not mad. PC*33. I punch something when Im angry. DE*34. When I get a bad grade, I figure out ways to get back at the teacher. DE*35. When Im mad at a teacher, I make jokes in class to get my friends laughing. DE*36. When I get a bad grade on a test, I rip the test paper into little pieces. DE____________________________________________________________________________

Note. DE = Destructive Expression; PC = Positive Coping; Items are shown in the order thatthey appear in the MSAI. The items are presented in a machine readable response sheet.*Items added to refine anger expression subscales


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14Table 3Analysis 1summary of principal components analysis for males and females using the original31 MSAI items

MSAI Subscale

Anger Hostility Destructive PositiveExperience Expression Coping

Males (n = 176)

M 31.1 13.1 8.6 13.8

SD 7.5 3.7 3.0 3.8

Range of item loadings .52.68 .65.71 .46.71 .57.72

Alpha .88 .82 .75 .71

Variance explained 17.0%. 10.8% 9.3% 9.3%

Females (n = 192)

M 29.8 11.7 8.0 16.7

SD 5.9 2.9 2.5 3.4

Range of item loadings .42.66 .60.72 .46.77 .39.57

Alpha .83 .79 .66 .59

Variance explained 14.3% 10.5% 7.6% 7.4%

Comparison of Subscale Means

t value (df = 366) -1.90 -3.96 -1.97 7.69

p value .059 .000 .050 .000


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15Table 4Analysis 2summary of principal components analysis for males and females combined usingthe original 31 MSAI items and five refinement parallel anger expression items

MSAI Subscale


Males and Females (n = 393)

Range item loadings .47.68 .44.72 .45.72 .43.65

Alpha .87 .78 .83 .65

Variance explained 13.8 9.6 10.7 7.2

Note. The only item with an inter-item loading above .40 was the Destructive Expression itemNo. 35 (When Im mad at a teacher, I make jokes in class to get my friends laughing.), whichhad a loading of .44 on the Hostility subscale.


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16Table 5Analysis 3summary of the cross validation principal components analysis for males andfemales combined using the 36 items in the refined MSAI

MSAI Subscale


Males and Females (n = 416)

Range item loadings .43.68 .46.65 .56.68 .41.59

Alpha .84 .80 .82 .67

Variance explained 9.8 7.5 8.8 6.5

Note. The only item with a inter-item loading above .40 was the Anger Experience item No. 5(You ask to go to the bathroom and the teacher says, no ), which had a loading of .44 on theHostility subscale.


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17Table 6Analysis 4Final item loadings, item-subscale communalities, and variance explained for therefined 36 item MSAI using the responses of all students in grades 912 (items numbers refer tothose in Table 2)

MSAI Subscale (N = 1,166)Anger Destructive Positive

Item Experience Hostility Expression Coping

1. .48

2. .52

3. .59

4. .64

5. .60

6. .62

7. .58

8. .64

9. .54

10 .58

11. .60

12. .57

13. .54

14. .69

15. .68

16. .61

17. .65

18. .65

19. .60

20. .60

21. .60

22. .51

23. .54

24. .54

25. .67


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1826. .57

27. .52

28. .55

29. .53

30. .44

31. .60

32. .48

33. .66

34. .63

35. .50

36. .60

% Variance 13.0 8.9 10.5 7.6

No. items 13 6 9 8Range 1352 624 9-36 832

Note. These four factors account for 40.0% of common variance. No items had an inter-subscaleloading of greater than .40. Items are showed in administration order.


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19Table 7Analysis 4descriptive, reliability, and 6-month stability data for the refined MSAI scale bygender, grade and ethnicity

MSAI Subscale

Anger Hostility Destructive Positive

Experience Expression CopingTotal Sample (n = 1,166)

M 30.8 12.4 14.5 17.3

SD 6.8 3.3 4.8 4.1

SEM .20 .10 .14 .12

Alpha .86 .80 .82 .68

6-mo. stability (n = 508) .56 .62 .59 .58

Males (n = 576)

M 31.7 13.0 15.9 15.9

SD 7.4 3.4 5.4 4.1

SEM .31 .14 .23 .17

Reliability .87 .79 .84 .68

6-mo. stability (n = 223) .53 .59 .57 .50

Females (n = 590)

M 29.9 11.8 13.1 18.6

SD 6.0 3.0 3.6 3.7

SEM .25 .12 .15 .15

Alpha .83 .79 .74 .616-mo. stability (n = 285) .58 .61 .53 .5F-value (1, 1164) 19.99 41.46 102.29 140.20

p-value .000 .000 .000 .000

Eta squared .017 .034 .081 .107

9th Grade (n = 352)

M 31.3 12.1 14.4 17.6

SD 6.0 3.1 4.4 3.9

SEM .32 .17 .23 .21

Alpha .83 .79 .78 .62

6-mo. stability (n = 200) .53 .61 .54 .66

10th Grade (n = 290)

M 31.0 12.6 14.5 17.3

SD 6.6 3.3 4.5 4.2

SEM .39 .20 .26 .25

Alpha .85 .79 .78 .68

6-mo. stability (n = 107) .59 .57 .73 .51


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2011th Grade (n = 267)

M 31.8 12.8 14.8 17.0

SD 7.5 3.6 5.4 4.4

SEM .46 .22 .33 .27

Alpha .88 .82 .85 .736-mo. stability (n = 84) .55 .68 .51 .46

12th Grade (n = 257)

M 28.8 12.2 14.2 17.1

SD 6.7 3.1 4.9 4.0

SEM .42 .19 .31 .25

Alpha .85 .80 .85 .68

6-mo. stability (n = 117) .50 .62 .56 .59

F-value (3, 1162) 10.47 3.17 0.74 1.43

p-value .000 .023 .530 .232

Eta squared .026 .008 .002 .004

White (n = 729)

M 30.5 12.2 14.3 17.5

SD 6.7 3.3 4.7 4.1

SEM .25 .12 .18 .15

Alpha .86 .81 .82 .69

6-mo. stability (n = 345) .56 .61 .54 .63

Racial or Ethnic Minority (n = 319)

M 31.6 12.9 15.1 16.6

SD 6.8 3.4 5.1 4.1

SEM .38 .19 .29 .23

Alpha .84 .80 .83 .67

6 mo. stability (n = 120) .56 .62 .68 .47

F-value (1,1046) 260.15 9.43 4.93 9.73

p-value .017 .002 .027 .002

Eta squared .005 .009 .005 .009Note. Six-month test-retest responses were available for 508 youths. Ethnicity was notindicated by 118 youths.


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21

Figure CaptionsFigure 1. MSAI distribution histograms and statistics for Anger Experience, Hostility,Destructive Expression, and Positive Coping.

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Msai Nasp Paper

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