A Service for Emotion Management: Turkish Version of the Adolescent Anger Rating Scale (AARS)

Abstract

An individual's activities are closely related with his/her communication abilities. One's awareness of his feelings and needs and to what extend he can control such feelings are the key factors which effect communication abilities. Webster (1996) defines anger as, a strong emotion; a feeling that is oriented toward some real or supposed grievance. Its synonyms are rage, displeasure, wrath. Adolescence is a very important period in one's life because it is when individuals start to have a place in the adult world, and when they create their own relation manners. The focus of this study is to create a version of a tool, which is originally developed in English and designed for a different culture. The current study adapted the scale to another culture in order to measure one of our fundamental feelings. The Adolescent Anger Rating Scale (AARS) is developed in 1994 by DeAnna McKinnie Burney in the United States of America. This article discusses and analyzes the AARS's reliability, validity and Turkish linguistic equivalence in detail. The AARS scores are reported for total anger score and three subscales measuring the aspects of the adolescent's typical anger response pattern as: Instrumental Anger, Reactive Anger, and Anger Control. A group of 569 adolescents from different backgrounds, aged between 13-23 years, participated in the study (Togan, 2006). The study provided significant statistical data for the Turkish version of the scale.