Tests · anger
Anger Test (DAR-5)
The Dimensions of Anger Reactions scale (DAR-5, Forbes et al., 2014) is a short, five-item screener for anger. It looks at how often and how strongly anger has shown up for you lately. Thinking back over the past four weeks, mark how much of the time each statement described you.
- 5 questions
- Forbes et al., 2014
- About this test
Answer all 5 questions.
What next
Anger settles down not by bottling it up but with practice: catching the first spark of irritation, taking a pause, and questioning the thought that fuels the heat. The exercises include emotion-regulation practices, a mood tracker, and a journal to help you see what actually sets you off.
About the DAR-5
How often and how strongly anger has shown up over the past four weeks, and whether it has made it harder to get along with people.
- Developed by
- Raymond Novaco (original scale, 1975); Graeme Hawthorne, David Forbes and colleagues (five-item version, 2006)
- Built for
- Screening for anger after trauma
- Main tests
- 486 college students and 163 male combat veterans with PTSD (both 2014)
Where it comes from
The DAR-5 is a short form of the Dimensions of Anger Reactions scale, which Raymond Novaco wrote in 1975 as an unpublished scale. The original had seven items and nine answer choices. In 2004, David Forbes and colleagues tested it in 192 Australian Vietnam veterans with combat-related PTSD and found that removing two items improved the scale. In 2006, Graeme Hawthorne's team cut the answer choices from nine to five and named the result the DAR5.
The five items ask how often anger shows up, how intense it gets, how long it lasts, whether you wanted to hit someone, and whether it affected how you got along with people. The team built it for screening after trauma, where a short form fits into a longer set of questions.
What the research found
In 2014, Forbes and colleagues tested the DAR-5 in 486 college students, with and without a history of trauma. Scores showed strong internal reliability, tracked a longer anger measure (the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2, or STAXI-2), and fit a single-factor model. The authors proposed a cut-off of 12 (abstract only).
A second 2014 paper tested 163 male veterans who had taken part in a hospital program for combat-related PTSD. Internal reliability was good (Cronbach's alpha .86). Veterans scoring 12 or higher differed from those below 12 on the STAXI anger scales and on measures of PTSD, depression and general distress, with medium to large effect sizes.
The cut-off isn't a diagnostic threshold. Later papers describe 12 as sitting near the 75th percentile of the college sample, chosen to line up with a cut-off on the STAXI-2. In a French translation tested on 822 community members, 12 matched that STAXI-2 cut-off with a sensitivity of 69% and a specificity of 75%. A Portuguese-language study of 368 adults found that a cut-off above 8 worked best against the STAXI, not 12.
How scoring works
| Score | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 5 to 11 | Anger in the typical range | Below the cut-off of 12. Published sources don't define a typical range, so this wording is the page's own. |
| 12 to 25 | Higher anger | At or above the published cut-off. Phoenix Australia's instructions say a score of 12 or above indicates problem anger and suggests a person might benefit from further assessment by a mental health clinician. |
The cut-off of 12 is the published one. It sits near the 75th percentile of the original college sample, so it flags higher-than-usual anger, and it isn't a diagnosis.
What it can't tell you
The DAR-5 was built for screening after trauma, and its main tests used college students and male combat veterans. The veteran study didn't test retest reliability, and its authors called for more work in other trauma-exposed groups. Every test relied on self-report. The cut-off came from comparing the DAR-5 with another anger scale, not from a clinician's judgment of who has an anger problem.
Anger overlaps with other difficulties. In the veteran study, DAR-5 scores correlated .56 with PTSD symptoms and .57 with general distress, so a high score can reflect more than anger alone. Item 4 asks whether you wanted to hit someone when you were angry, which covers the urge, not what you did. The scale also can't say whether your anger was justified.
How to use your result
A score of 12 or higher suggests a closer look at your anger. A lower score can still go with anger that matters to you, for example at home. The scale covers four weeks, so retaking it after a month shows whether the pattern changed.
If anger has led to hurting someone, or you worry it might, talk with a mental health professional soon, and call 911 if anyone is in immediate danger. Our guides to anger management with CBT and the STOP skill cover what to do in the moments when anger spikes.
More on this topic: Anger management with CBT, STOP skill (DBT), Snapping at your family, Stress test (PSS-10).
Your answers
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Sources 8
- Forbes et al., Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2014 (PubMed): The 163-veteran study: the five items, 1 to 5 scoring, alpha of .86, the cut-off of 12 in use, and the authors' limits. Full text read through a copy on a co-author's website (jon-elhai.com).
- Forbes et al., Depression and Anxiety, 2014 (PubMed): The 486-student study that proposed the cut-off of 12. Abstract only; the full text was behind a 403 error.
- Forbes et al., Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2004 (PubMed): Testing of the original DAR in 192 Australian veterans; it describes the DAR as unpublished. Abstract only.
- Hawthorne, Mouthaan, Forbes and Novaco, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 2006 (PubMed): Reduction from seven items and nine answer choices to five and five, and the DAR5 name. Abstract only.
- Phoenix Australia, DAR-5 questionnaire and explanatory notes (PDF): The published items and answer labels, scoring (5 to 25) and the cut-off of 12. States no license or terms of use.
- Ceschi et al., European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2020 (PMC): French adaptation in 822 people: the 75th percentile, and sensitivity and specificity of the cut-off. Open access full text.
- Kim et al., BMC Psychology, 2023 (PMC): Open access full text; describes how the cut-off of 12 was derived in the original college study. A secondary description.
- Goulart et al., International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 2021 (PubMed): 368 adults in a Portuguese-language community sample; best cut-off above 8. Abstract only.
Related: trauma and stress test, self-compassion test, resilience test.