Life history of experienced and witnessed aggression: Development of a new assessment instrument.

A Lifetime History of Experienced Aggression and a Lifetime History of Witnessed Aggression assessment was developed and its psychometric properties examined in a modest sample of individuals with and without history of psychopathology. Following this, the two assessments were administered to 400 subjects with or without histories of major psychiatric and personality disorders. These studies demonstrated good to excellent psychometric properties as well as evidence of convergent and divergent validity. Since both assessments quantify the occurrence of aggressive behaviors directed at a person and the occurrence of aggressive behaviors witnessed, the researchers propose that these assessments represents a needed modular assessment of aggression in the environment for behavioral science research.