Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives

1. Abstract

The Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives (BAAA) scale is a self-report psychometric instrument designed to evaluate social-cognitive normative orientations toward violence, physical retaliation, and peaceful conflict resolution among youth. Originally developed and refined through adolescent violence prevention initiatives—most notably the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded Multisite Violence Prevention Project and the Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP) curriculum evaluations by Farrell, Meyer, and White (2001)—the scale provides a structured assessment of cognitive factors that mediate youth aggressive behavior. Consisting of 12 items administered on a 4-point Likert-type scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 4 = Strongly agree), the BAAA comprises two primary, distinct subscales: Beliefs About Aggression (assessing normative endorsement of aggression, retaliation, and coercive posturing) and Use of Nonviolent Strategies (evaluating self-reported behavioral intentions, endorsement of third-party mediation, and de-escalation tactics). Psychometric investigations across diverse urban and suburban middle school populations (grades 6–8) demonstrate robust internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .73 to .83 for the aggression dimensions and .68 to .76 for the nonviolent alternatives dimensions. Confirmatory factor analytic investigations support an oblique two-factor structural representation that yields favorable goodness-of-fit indices. The instrument exhibits strong construct, convergent, and predictive validity, systematically forecasting teacher-rated aggression, disciplinary infractions, and self-reported delinquent behavior across multi-wave longitudinal trials. As an outcome evaluation instrument, the BAAA remains an indispensable metric for adolescent mental health practitioners, clinical child psychologists, and public health researchers assessing universal, selective, and indicated violence intervention curricula.

2. Keywords

Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives, BAAA, normative beliefs about aggression, adolescent violence prevention, social-cognitive theory, nonviolent conflict resolution, school-based interventions, Multisite Violence Prevention Project, Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways, psychometric assessment

3. Authors

The primary development, operationalization, and empirical validation of the Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives scale emerged through the collaborative efforts of academic researchers in clinical child psychology and behavioral epidemiology, in conjunction with nationwide federal public health consortia:

• Albert D. Farrell, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. Renowned for his scholarship in developmental psychopathology, adolescent risk prevention, and the psychometric evaluation of youth violence interventions.
• Aleta L. Meyer, Ph.D. — Formerly of the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University; later Senior Health Scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Washington, D.C.
• Kevin S. White, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University. Specializing in clinical child interventions and quantitative evaluation of school-based emotional and behavioral curricula.
• The Multisite Violence Prevention Project (MVPP) — A collaborative research consortium sponsored by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia. Principal institutional investigators were affiliated with Virginia Commonwealth University, Duke University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

4. Purpose

Interpersonal youth violence represents a major public health concern associated with adverse educational, somatic, and developmental outcomes. The overarching purpose of the Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives (BAAA) measure is to capture the underlying cognitive schema and normative frameworks that govern an adolescent’s choice to either escalate or de-escalate interpersonal conflict. Decades of behavioral research demonstrate that aggressive acts rarely occur in a cognitive vacuum; instead, overt conduct problems and reactive hostile behaviors are heavily structured by social-cognitive scripts that define what behaviors are acceptable, socially required, or effective in challenging peer dynamics.

The BAAA was engineered to address key functional objectives across both research and clinical domains:

• Intervention Evaluation: Serving as a primary proximate outcome metric in large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing preventive programs such as Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP) and the Great Deal / Multisite Violence Prevention Project curricula. Because changes in normative beliefs often precede durable behavioral change, the BAAA captures intermediate intervention effects prior to observable shifts in school disciplinary records or juvenile justice encounters.
• Individual Risk Profiling: Identifying youth who hold maladaptive normative beliefs, such as viewing violence as a defensive mandate (e.g., “punch or get punched”) or perceiving de-escalation as social cowardice. In school counseling and clinical child psychology settings, these cognitive markers guide personalized cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) modules focused on anger restructuring, attribution retraining, and assertiveness training.
• Community and Cohort Surveillance: Providing epidemiological baseline assessments of peer group norms within urban, suburban, and rural middle school environments, allowing public health professionals to map institutional climate trends and allocate selective prevention resources.

From a theoretical standpoint, the BAAA bridges the gap between static dispositional personality traits and dynamic cognitive structures. By assessing both pro-aggressive rationalizations and pro-social alternative strategies within the same measurement battery, the scale avoids the psychometric pitfall of treating the absence of aggression as automatically equivalent to the presence of constructive conflict resolution capabilities.

5. Psychological Construct

The BAAA quantifies adolescent normative beliefs concerning physical confrontation and constructive social problem-solving. In developmental psychopathology, normative beliefs are self-regulating cognitions regarding the acceptability, justification, or impermissibility of specific behavioral responses. The BAAA measures two core, orthogonal dimensions:

Beliefs About Aggression

The Beliefs About Aggression subscale assesses an adolescent’s cognitive approval of coercive power, physical retaliation, preemptive violence, and face-saving aggression. Within peer ecologies, particularly in early adolescence, violent behavior is often sustained by cognitive rationalizations that neutralize internal moral sanctions. This construct includes several distinct facets:

• Instrumental and Coercive Utility: The perception that physical force is an acceptable mechanism for securing dominance, resources, or compliance from peers (e.g., endorsing that hitting others is justified to get what one wants).
• Retaliatory and Just-World Moral Licensing: The conviction that interpersonal transgressions, provocations, or disrespect warrant physical violence as a righteous consequence (e.g., believing that making someone angry justifies being beaten up).
• Perceived Inevitability and Preemptive Hostility: The fatalistic expectation that non-violent options are nonexistent in peer disputes, compelling preemptive strikes to forestall victimization (e.g., the belief that one must punch first to avoid being punched).
• Reputational Protection and Peer Pressure: The cognitive script that withdrawal or walking away from an impending fight signals weakness or cowardice, thereby damaging status within the adolescent peer hierarchy.
• Emotional Dysregulation Licensing: The endorsement of explosive, dysregulated physical violence as an uncontrollable or legitimate byproduct of intense affective states (e.g., believing it is acceptable to hit when one gets “crazy with anger”).

Use of Nonviolent Strategies

The Use of Nonviolent Strategies (frequently referenced in literature as Personal Beliefs About Alternatives) subscale operationalizes cognitive support for and self-reported orientation toward prosocial, peace-building, and conflict mitigation behaviors. Rather than representing mere passive behavioral avoidance, this construct measures deliberate problem-solving competencies:

• Cognitive De-escalation and Perspective Taking: Endorsement of rational discussion, active communication, and negotiation in place of physical confrontation (e.g., choosing to talk out a problem rather than fighting).
• Strategic Avoidance and Emotional Containment: The active, self-regulated choice to disregard provocation or disengage from hostile peers (e.g., ignoring someone when angry rather than retaliating).
• Peer Mediation and Upstander Intervention: The willingness to disrupt social violence by actively intervening to prevent or stop physical altercations among peers, even when such intervention challenges prevailing group norms or risks peer disapproval.
• Abstract Value Attribution to Nonviolence: The overarching conviction that constructive alternatives are practically superior and yield more advantageous outcomes than physical combat.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives scale is situated at the intersection of two prominent psychological paradigms: Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986, 2001) and the Social Information Processing (SIP) model (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge, 1986).

Social Information Processing Mechanics

According to Dodge and Crick’s SIP framework, an adolescent’s behavior in an ambiguous or provocative peer situation unfolds across six sequential cognitive stages: (1) encoding of external and internal cues; (2) mental representation and interpretation of cues (e.g., attribution of intent); (3) clarification or selection of goals; (4) response access or construction; (5) response decision; and (6) behavioral enactment. The constructs captured by the BAAA operate primarily at Step 4 (Response Generation) and Step 5 (Response Evaluation and Decision):

• When presented with interpersonal friction, an adolescent accesses mental scripts stored in long-term memory. A youth with elevated scores on Use of Nonviolent Strategies readily retrieves alternative behaviors such as verbal negotiation, third-party mediation, or planned disengagement.
• At the response decision stage (Step 5), the adolescent evaluates potential behaviors based on outcome expectations (e.g., “Will this solve the problem?”), outcome values (e.g., “Do I care if they respect me or fear me?”), and normative acceptability (e.g., “Is this the right thing to do?”). Youth exhibiting high scores on the Beliefs About Aggression subscale possess low moral barriers against violence and view physical retribution as justifiable and socially necessary.

Moral Disengagement and Social Norms

Bandura’s formulation of moral disengagement (Bandura et al., 1996) provides a parallel explanatory lens for the BAAA items. Bandura asserted that individuals typically adopt personal standards that guide prosocial behavior and deter harmful acts. However, internal self-regulatory mechanisms can be selectively deactivated through cognitive mechanisms such as moral justification (“they deserve to be beaten up”), external attribution of blame (“I had no choice”), and minimization of consequences. The BAAA explicitly indexes these cognitive deactivations, exposing the belief systems that permit adolescents to execute hostile actions without experiencing cognitive dissonance, guilt, or remorse.

Furthermore, Huesmann and Guerra’s (1997) developmental model of normative beliefs underscores that children initially hold fluid, situation-dependent attitudes about aggression. By the time they enter middle school (approximate ages 11–14), these attitudes crystalize into durable normative belief structures that filter incoming social information, constrain behavioral options, and stabilize aggressive conduct across the transition into high school.

7. Validity

The construct, convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity of the BAAA has been evaluated through clinical trials, federal compendiums (Dahlberg et al., 2005), and multi-site school interventions.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s sensitivity to developmental, gender, and context-specific trajectories. In initial validation cohorts reported by Farrell et al. (2001) involving urban middle school adolescents, male students systematically endorsed higher baseline scores on the Beliefs About Aggression subscale than female students, matching established developmental epidemiological patterns of overt physical aggression. Conversely, female students demonstrated significantly higher baseline scores on the Use of Nonviolent Strategies dimension.

Convergent Validity

The BAAA demonstrates robust convergent associations with established measures of externalizing problems and social cognition:

• Scores on the Beliefs About Aggression subscale correlate positively with standardized measures of aggressive behavior, such as the Problem Behavior Frequency Scale (PBFS; Farrell et al., 2000), exhibiting bivariate correlations ranging from r = .38 to .54 (p < .001).
• Aggression beliefs demonstrate strong positive convergence with scales measuring hostile attributional bias (e.g., the Intent Attributions Measure) and trait anger/irritability inventories.
• The Use of Nonviolent Strategies subscale correlates positively with measures of emotional empathy, perspective taking (such as subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index), prosocial peer affiliation, and active conflict resolution self-efficacy (r values typically between .30 and .45).

Predictive and Criterion Validity

Longitudinal evaluations conducted during the Multisite Violence Prevention Project (2004, 2008) demonstrated that middle school students endorsing elevated baseline scores on the Beliefs About Aggression subscale were significantly more likely to be involved in physical fights, receive disciplinary office referrals, and experience out-of-school suspensions over 12-, 24-, and 36-month follow-up windows. Furthermore, reductions in Beliefs About Aggression scores successfully mediated the treatment effect of the RIPP violence prevention curriculum on observable reductions in school-based physical violence, establishing strong criterion and construct-level sensitivity.

Discriminant Validity

The BAAA differentiates between physical conflict resolution styles and broader, non-interpersonal psychopathology. Scores on the BAAA show low or nonsignificant associations with internalizing symptoms such as generalized anxiety, somatic complaints, and unipolar depressive affect (typical r values < .15), demonstrating that the instrument specifically indexes social-cognitive mechanisms of aggression rather than broad negative emotionality.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency and temporal stability of the BAAA subscales have been evaluated across multiple diverse adolescent samples, including urban African American, Latino, and multi-ethnic student cohorts.

Internal Consistency

Empirical studies evaluating the 12-item inventory and its component subscales consistently document acceptable to good internal reliability:

• Beliefs About Aggression Subscale: In the longitudinal validation studies published by Farrell, Meyer, and White (2001), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the aggression subscale ranged from .73 to .81 across testing waves in urban 6th and 7th-grade cohorts. In the wider Multisite Violence Prevention Project (2004) cohort-wide survey encompassing thousands of middle school students across four geographic regions, alpha coefficients remained stable between .78 and .83.
• Use of Nonviolent Strategies Subscale: The nonviolent alternatives subscale exhibits Cronbach’s alpha values typically ranging between .68 and .76. Given that this subscale incorporates both interpersonal actions (e.g., trying to stop friends from fighting) and intrapersonal choices (e.g., ignoring someone when mad), an alpha near .70 reflects an appropriate balance between construct breath and measurement precision.

Test-Retest Reliability and Temporal Stability

In untreated control groups across school evaluation intervals, the BAAA exhibits stable test-retest reliability across 3-month to 6-month intervals, with stability coefficients exceeding r = .60 (p < .001). This confirms that while the normative beliefs are stable enough to function as durable cognitive traits over the school year, they retain sufficient sensitivity to detect therapeutic shifts produced by targeted violence prevention interventions.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the BAAA has been evaluated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across diverse adolescent samples.

Exploratory Factor Structure

Early principal axis factoring and principal component analyses utilizing oblique (Promax or Oblimin) rotations consistently extracted two primary factors accounting for substantial cumulative variance:

• Factor 1: Support for Aggression / Retaliation. Items 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, and 12 load strongly onto this factor, with primary factor loadings typically ranging from .52 to .78. Item 9 (“I feel big and tough when I push someone around”) often aligns with this factor (loadings ~.45–.60), although some analytic formulations treat it as an auxiliary indicator of dominance orientation.
• Factor 2: Support for Nonviolent Alternatives / Mitigation. Items 1, 2, 5, 7, and 8 load cleanly onto this factor, with factor loadings ranging from .48 to .74. Cross-loadings onto Factor 1 are minimal (typically < .20).

Confirmatory Factor Analytic Fit

CFA models testing an oblique two-factor specification have demonstrated satisfactory goodness-of-fit across urban and rural adolescent cohorts. Representative model fit indices reported in violence prevention literatures include:

• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values typically range from .038 to .055 (well below the conservative .06 cutoff criterion, indicating excellent error approximation).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently exceed .93 to .96, indicating strong relative fit compared to the null independence model.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Estimates generally exceed .92 to .95.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently fall below .05.

Comparative model testing has verified that a two-factor oblique model provides a statistically superior fit over a unidimensional model (where all items load onto a single global aggression-alternatives continuum, which produces poor fit, CFI < .80). The moderate negative latent correlation between the two factors (typically ranging between r = -.35 and -.48) indicates that endorsement of aggression and endorsement of peaceful alternatives represent distinct, non-reciprocal cognitive architectures rather than simple opposing endpoints of a single construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives (BAAA)
• Alternative Titles in Literature: Personal Beliefs About Alternatives / Beliefs Supporting Aggression (CDC Compendium designation)
• Target Population: Middle school youth / early adolescents (typically grades 6 through 8; ages 11–15)
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital self-report questionnaire; can be read aloud in group administration settings for cohorts with reading difficulties
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes
• Total Item Count: 12 items
• Response Scale: 4-point Likert-type scale formatted as:
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Agree
  • 4 = Strongly agree
• Subscale Composition:
  • Beliefs About Aggression: Items 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, and 12 (Item 9 is included in the full survey battery and assesses coercive dominance).
  • Use of Nonviolent Strategies: Items 1, 2, 5, 7, and 8.
• Scoring and Computational Rules:
  • Raw response values correspond to the selected scale option (1 to 4).
  • All items within each subscale are evaluated. (Note: In some research protocols, items are reverse-coded when generating a composite violence risk index; however, standard CDC compendium scoring evaluates each subscale independently).
  • Subscale scores are calculated by summing the numerical values of the subscale items and dividing by the total number of items in that subscale, yielding an interpretable mean score between 1.00 and 4.00.
  • Interpretation: Higher scores on the Beliefs About Aggression subscale reflect greater normative acceptance of physical violence and retaliation. Higher scores on the Use of Nonviolent Strategies subscale reflect greater cognitive commitment to de-escalation, peer mediation, and peaceful alternatives.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Beliefs About Aggression and Alternatives inventory was developed and refined across the late 1990s and early 2000s, with prominent milestone publications in 2001 (Farrell, Meyer, & White) and 2004 (Multisite Violence Prevention Project). The tool was compiled and made available for public health and educational use by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within the compendium Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths (Dahlberg, Toal, Swahn, & Behrens, 2005).

As a work supported by federal research grants from the CDC and published in government evaluation compendiums, the instrument resides in the public domain for research, clinical, and non-commercial educational evaluations. No licensing fees or royalty payments are required to use, administer, or adapt the scale. Investigators and practitioners utilizing the BAAA are expected to maintain scientific attribution by citing the original developers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compendium sources in all presentations and publications.

12. References

• Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.
• Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1
• Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (1996). Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 364–374. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.364
• Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74–101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.74
• Dahlberg, L. L., Toal, S. B., Swahn, M., & Behrens, C. B. (2005). Measuring violence-related attitudes, behaviors, and influences among youths: A compendium of assessment tools (2nd ed.). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/YV_Compendium.pdf
• Dodge, K. A. (1986). A social information processing model of social competence in children. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), The Minnesota symposia on child psychology: Cognitive perspectives on children’s social and behavioral development (Vol. 18, pp. 77–125). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Farrell, A. D., Kung, E. M., White, K. S., & Valois, R. F. (2000). The structure and measurement of problem behavior in urban adolescents: A dynamic model. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 10(2), 179–216. https://doi.org/10.1207/SJRA1002_4
• Farrell, A. D., Meyer, A. L., & White, K. S. (2001). Evaluation of Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP): A school-based prevention program for reducing violence among urban adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 30(4), 451–463. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15374424JCCP3004_03
• Huesmann, L. R., & Guerra, N. G. (1997). Children’s normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(2), 408–419. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.2.408
• Multisite Violence Prevention Project. (2004). Description of measures: Cohort-wide student survey. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
• Multisite Violence Prevention Project. (2008). The effects of a targeted innovative intervention for high-risk youth: The Multisite Violence Prevention Project. Preventive Medicine, 46(3), 224–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2007.07.014

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)