THE PSYCOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF HAUSA TRANSLATED VERSION OF BUSS- PERRY AGGRESSIVE QUESTIONNAIRE

Abstract

Abstract

The Buss-Perry Aggressive Questionnaire (AQ) has been widely used for the measurement of aggression in children and adolescents. Although developed in the English language, the versatility of the AQ had made it to be used across cultures and it has been translated and validated into a couple of international languages. However, despite its wide usage among educational and counselling psychologists in Nigeria, a Nigerian translated version of the instrument does not exist. This paper thus describes the qualitative and quantitative procedures of the translation of the AQ for use in a Hausa-speaking community of Almajiri children that is, as far as possible, ‘culture-free’ or equivalent. The approach involved the use of the principles of Brislin's translation model involving forward and back translation cycles by bilinguals and harmonized translation by a committee of translators. Two bilingual translators were involved in each of the forward and back translations. The committee of translators comprising the four independent translators for each phase, a Counselling Psychologist that is an expert in the usage of the AQ and the researchers held group discussions and independent ratings of the translated items to reach a consensus on the best-translated version of each of the items. To determine the content validity of the translated scale, the quantitative measurement procedure by Lawshe (1975) was used. The translated scale was then administered on 324 Almajiri children randomly selected from 5,961 in five Almajiri integrated schools in Gombe metropolis of Gombe State.  Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess its factorial structure. The results of the reliability and validity analyses showed that the scale is highly reliable and valid for screening aggression in Almajiri children of Gombe metropolis.

KEY WORDS: Translation, Aggressive, Almajiri and Psychometric.