Preferred Name
Autumn Wild
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
5-11-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
Advisor(s)
Bernice Marcopulos
Sara Finney
David Szwedo
Jason Stout
Abstract
Aggression is a concern within inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. Previous research has turned to various methods of assessing aggression risk, including comprehensive psychometric risk assessment tools and analysis of specific dynamic and static factors. This literature has focused on predicting whether aggression will occur or not during a patient’s admission. The goal of the current study was to determine if various patient and hospital variables cited in the literature to be predictive of the occurrence of aggression would maintain predictive utility in assessing whether a patient would be aggressive once (Dependent Variable = 0; N = 158) or more than once (Dependent Variable = 1; N = 88) during their admission. Three logistic regression models were created to assess this outcome with an archival sample of 246 patients within an inpatient psychiatric hospital. The first model contained patient variables (Sex, Age, Presence of Substance Abuse Disorder, Presence of Non-Mood Psychosis Disorder, Presence of Mood Disorder, Presence of Personality Disorder, Marital Status, Legal Status), the second contained hospital/event related variables (Client Living Area, Event Date, Event Time), and the third contained all predictors. It was hypothesized that Model 1 and Model 3 would be significant; specifically, it was hypothesized that all patient variables would be significant, and that hospital/event related variables would not be significant. Logistic regression analyses showed that no model significantly accounted for the binary outcome variable (Aggressive Once, Aggressive More Than Once). This was likely due to a lack of relationship between the categorical predictors and the categorical outcome, as determined via chi-square analyses. It was concluded that in the context of the current psychiatric hospital from which data were obtained, empirically supported variables did not maintain predictive utility. These results are discussed in addition to limitations and implications of the present study, with directions for future research provided.
Recommended Citation
Wild, Autumn N., "Analysis of predictive factors for aggression within inpatient psychiatric hospitalization" (2023). Masters Theses, 2020-current. 222.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/masters202029/222
