Developing an aggression scale for contact sports using a projective technique: Focusing on moments of violent contact in women's lacrosse

Abstract

Contact sports have attracted attention in the study of aggression, and many empirical studies on the relation between the two have been conducted. However, previous research on aggression has neither led to a consensus on gender differences, nor on differences between the various types of sports. The reason for this is that existing scales do not help quantify the ‘intentions' of subjects and are not useful in differentiating between different types of aggression. Accordingly, the use of psychological scales for the study of aggression in the area of sport to date has been limited.

To overcome this problem, this study sought to develop a scale based on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) that discriminates between four types of aggression in sports −strategic, reactive, impulsive and hostile− from the perspectives of ‘acceptability' and ‘intention'. In Study 1, illustrations depicting scenes from a lacrosse tournament were created and a evaluation scale was developed. In Study 2, the validity of the scale was assessed and the characteristics of each type of aggression were clarified. The results revealed the overall validity of the developed aggression scale and also indicated that contact sport athletes can control their aggression, with high level athletes employing aggression strategically.