Convergent and Discriminant Validity of the Test of Passive Aggression in a Psychotherapy Outpatient Sample

Abstract

Background: While most clinical aggression questionnaires focus on the assessment of active aggression, the recently developed Test of Passive Aggression (TPA) assesses both self-directed (TPA-SD) and other-directed passive aggression (TPA-OD). Reliability and factorial validity of the TPA have been demonstrated in a clinical sample, while previous evaluations of convergent and discriminant validity were limited to student samples. The current study aimed at addressing this gap by demonstrating convergent and discriminant validity of the TPA in an outpatient sample.Methods: Eighty-two patients admitted to an outpatient psychotherapy unit at Saarland University, Germany, participated in the preregistered study with an assessment of self-reported passive aggression, impulsivity, anger expression, self-compassion, self-esteem, and auto-aggressive mindset. Analyses used regression models with robust maximum likelihood estimations.Results: Self-directed passive aggression showed a significant association with self-compassion, auto-aggressive mindset, self-esteem, and internal anger expression supporting the convergent validity of TPA-SD. Results on discriminant validity of TPA-SD were heterogenous at the first sight, revealing small associations of self-directed passive aggression with anger control but medium associations with impulsivity. However, exploratory analysis showed that the medium association with impulsivity was driven by the non-behavioral impulsivity dimension “inattention” and that both behavioral impulsivity dimensions (“motor-impulsivity” and “unplanned behavior”) demonstrated only weak associations with TPA-SD. Validity of TPA-OD was not supported by the current study.Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence for the validity of the TPA-SD to outpatient samples. Future studies will need to analyze construct validity based on a nomological network using larger and more diverse samples.

Longitudinal association between depressive symptoms and self-directed passive aggression: A random intercept cross-lagged panel analysis

“…The results of our cross-sectional analyses correspond with our hypotheses, based on the self-control model of depression (35). In line with previous studies (16,59), passive SD-AB was moderate to strongly associated with depressive symptoms, even when general symptom severity was controlled for. Passive SD-AB also accounted for a significant amount of variance in depressive symptoms when controlled for perceived stress.…”

“…Furthermore, depressive symptoms at M2 (but not at M1 and M3) matched the clinical cut-off for mild depression [BDI-II = 14 (51)], with BDI-II scores ranging from 1 to 51, thereby contradicting the assumption of severely restricted variances. Additionally, results regarding the association between passive SD-AB and depressive symptoms are in line with our previous studies in clinical samples with mean ages of M = 38.61 and M = 53.21 (15,59), demonstrating the comparability of results from student and patient samples. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the BDI-II, a self-report measure for severity of depressive symptoms.…”

“…Passive SD-AB was measured using the TPA (15). Its passive SD-AB scale (TPA-SD) is a valid and reliable 12-item scale (59), which demonstrated acceptable to good internal consistencies in the current study ( α = .77 – .84).…”