Pergamon 0005-7967(94)00044-1 Behat,. Res. Ther. Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 229-233. 1995 Copyright ,(': 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0005-7967/95 $9.50 + 0.00 V A L I D A T I O N O F T H E D U T C H A D A P T A T I O N O F T H E B U S S - D U R K E E H O S T I L I T Y I N V E N T O R Y A L F R E D LANGE, BAHMAN D E H G H A N I and EDWIN DE BEURS Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Received 2 February 1994) Summary--The validity of the Dutch adaptation of the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory was investigated. On the basis of the ratings of the staff of a residential treatment center for adolescents with condu disorders, two contrast groups (high versus low aggression) were formed. In all, 67 male adolesce participated in the study. The subscales of the inventory clearly discriminated between the two gro A discriminant function analysis revealed that the inventory could correctly classify the subjects in aggressive and non-aggressive with 96% accuracy. The pattern of correlations between the inventory and an anger scale and a social desirability scale provide further support for the construct validity of t instrument. I N T R O D U C T I O N The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (Buss & Durkee, 1957) is a widely used questionnaire on aggression (Biaggio, 1980). The original questionnaire consists of 66 items with false-true answers, and contains seven scales: Assault, Indirect Aggression, Irritability, Negativism, Resentment, Suspicion and Verbal Aggression. Despite the use of the BDHI in numerous investigations, the scales of the original BDHI lack factorial validity. Ramanaiah, Conn and Schiil (1987) cite numerous studies in which factor analyses of the inventory consistently yielded two major factors: Overt Hostility and Covert Hostility. Buss and Perry (1992) recently developed a revised BDHI, with four scales: Verbal Aggression, Physical Aggression, Anger and Hostility. In contrast to the original BDHI, the scales of the new questionnaire were established on the basis of factor analysis. The new questionnaire is shorter (29 items), and instead of false-true categories, the respondent chooses out of five categories. Following the results of a pilot study by Lischewsky and De Ruiter (1989), Lange, Pahlich, Sarucco, Smits, Dehghani and Hanewald (1995) found two factors underlying the Dutch version of the inventory (BDHI-D). These were similar to the factors identified in the above mentioned studies: Overt Aggression (16 items measuring the tendency to express verbal or physical aggression) and Covert Aggression (19 items tapping the emotional and cognitive components: hostility, irritability, suspicion and anger), with reliability coefficients of respectively ~t = 0.77 and = 0.78. The reliability of the total questionnairewas ct = 0.80. These factors were used to construct Overt and Covert hostility scales. Lange et al. (1995) also found good convergent and divergent validity for both scales. Their findings show that anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, somatization, insufficiency, neuroticism, and bitterness are associated with Covert Aggression but not with Overt Aggression. The aim of the present study is to investigatethe concurrent validity of the BDHI-D, by comparing the responsesto the questionnairewith the behavioural ratings of the degree of aggressiveness of the subjects. In addition, the convergent and divergent validity will be investigated by correlating the BDHI-D with other questionnaires. M E T H O D Subjects Seventy-one male juvenile delinquents, who were undergoing a residential rehabilitatory program, voluntarily participated in the study. The data of four subjects had to be omitted from 229