Sex Differences in the Full and Reduced Versions of the Aggression Questionnaire

Sex differences in aggression have been widely analyzed using the Buss and Perry (1992) aggression questionnaire (AQ). The sex effects obtained when this questionnaire has been shortened and refined indicate some difficulties in replicating the results obtained with the full questionnaire. The present paper attempts to analyze whether these difficulties indicate sex bias in the AQ. To this end we administered the AQ to a sample of 416 subjects and analyzed the possible sex bias of the AQ by using confirmatory factor analysis models. Results show that the AQ is free of sex bias and that sex differences in the AQ and in the two revised versions seem to be the result of true sex differences and are specific to the physical aggression scale.