August 22, 2026Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Response categories and anger measurement: do fewer categories result in poorer measurement?
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Discussion
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Implication
Psychometric evaluation demonstrates that reducing response categories preserves anger scale validity in military veterans, suggesting improved utility for stressed populations.
Key Points
- To evaluate whether reducing the number of items and response categories in the Dimensions of Anger Reactions (DAR) scale improves measurement efficiency without compromising psychometric validity.
- Analyzed three samples of Australian military veterans: participants from a DAR validation study, veterans in group therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and veterans in lifestyle programs.
- Applied item response theory (IRT) modeling to evaluate internal psychometric performance and compared competing instrument models against external criteria.
- The original 9-category response structure exceeded respondent channel capacity, causing response bias in the second half of the instrument due to poor category discrimination.
- Reducing the instrument from 7 items to 5 items and from 9 response categories to 5 categories (forming the DAR5) maintained full sensitivity, reliability, and validity.
Cite This Study
Hawthorne et al. (2005) studied this question.