Development of the Reactive Aggression Assessment (RAGA-16) Part I: Item Selection and Initial Validation

Objective Severe behavioral outbursts characterized by reactive aggression (RA) are common and highly impairing for young children and their families. A growing body of research suggests RA may characterize a distinct group of youth with behavior problems; however, there is a lack of validated, RA-specific assessment tools for children. The current work presents psychometric evidence for a novel screening tool and outcome measure: the 16-item Reactive Aggression Assessment (RAGA-16).Method A nationally representative US sample (N = 1,162) of parents with children ages 5 to 19 (M = 11.4; SD = 3.98) completed an as-yet unpublished assessment of mood and behavior problems. Using this item pool, we employed two distinct test development approaches, Data-Informed vs. Automated Test Assembly (ATA), and compared the resulting scales based on multiple facets of reliability and associations with parent-reported health information.Results Both the Data-Informed and ATA-derived forms showed high reliability (rxx > .80) across a wide range of symptom severity and excellent internal consistency despite containing largely different items. The Data-Informed version showed descriptively higher detection of parent-report externalizing disorders (AUC = .76 vs. .73). Percentile and T-Score norms for scores on the Data Informed form are reported.Conclusions The Data-Informed version was selected as the final version of the RAGA-16. Having a brief, highly reliable, targeted assessment of RA with epidemiological norms allows researchers and clinicians to better characterize RA behaviors in youth. Forthcoming work will validate the RAGA-16 as a screening tool in clinical settings.