Measuring Aggression Among University Students : A Comparative Study Between Garmian University and Soran University Students

Aggression is regarded as an obvious attempt to harm an individual intentionally. It could negatively impact the individual’s personal, social, and educational life. Likewise, Aggression is one of the very common issues that face students at different stages of their studies. The current study uses quantitative descriptive method. In addition, the purpose of this study is to measure students’ aggression in University of Garmian and University of Soran in Iraqi Kurdistan Region. The study seeks to make compression at the levels of aggression between the two universities. In order to obtain the data, researchers used survey questioner relying on “The Aggression Scale: A Self-Report measure of Aggressive Behavior” to 400 students at Soran University and Garmian University. The study indicates that students in both Universities are not aggressive according to the used scale. Moreover, a slight difference was found at the level of aggression between males and females in both Universities.


Introduction
Aggression is one of the very common issues that face students at different stages of their studies.Accordingly, it is estimated that 246 million students around the world experience at least one type of aggression, such as physical, psychological, and sexual violence (UNESCO, 2017).In addition, aggression might leave impacts on various aspect of student's life.In fact, studies showed that aggression could negatively effect on the individual's personal, social, and educational life (Smith and Furlong, 1998;Kozina, 2007).acadj@garmian.edu.krdVol.5, No.3 (July, 2018) Hence, Researchers have conducted numerous studies to measure aggression and how to prevent it.It is important to mention that psychologists have not agreed on an exact definition for aggression.However, Buss's definition is one of the most used definitions.According to Buss "aggression is "a response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism" (1963).Later, Baron and Richardson added another characteristic to the definition, which was motivation.Accordingly "aggression is any form of behavior directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment" (Baron and Richardson, 1994;cited by Geen, R. G, 1990).There are two types of aggression, direct, which is linked to physical aggression and indirect aggression that is associated with the verbal one.In other words, it is important to note that not every behavior is considered as aggression, but only those that are intended to harm someone (Murray & Ostrov, 2009;Kozina, 2009).
Studying and researching about the factors behind causing aggression is another topic that scholars have attempted to find out.Findings of some studies determine the reasons behind aggressive behaviors, which are biological, environmental, social, and psychological factors.(Mabitla, 2009;Lane SD, Kjome, Moeller FG, 2010;Blair, 2016) Measuring aggression is another key aspect that researchers have tried to investigate.In fact, it has been studied widely.For instance, Alami and Shahghasemi (2017) conducted a research entitled "Students' Aggression and Its Relevance to Personal, Family, and Social Factors".The goal of the study was to determine aggression among the students as well as showing its relationship with the personal, family, and social characteristics.
The researchers used cross-sectional, analytic study; the sample of the study was made of 809 Gonbad university students in Iran.The result showed that there were significant associations between the mean aggression score of dormitory students and sex.While no significant association between all independent factors and mean aggression score of students living out of dorm were found.
Another attempt to measure aggression is done by Kozina (2007) entitled " Measurement of Students' Aggressive Behavior in School Settings".She aimed to measure student's aggression at the educational setting in Slovenia.This research shows the psychometrical progression used as a tool for measuring aggression in schools done by students.Also, contemporary tools are used so as to identify associates the aggression done by student depending on distinct students and school reasons.Gender, age, educational objectives and activities as well as free times and behavior toward school are regarded as the student reasons.While job stratification between teachers and their opinion toward the school safety is taken for the school reasons.The metric acadj@garmian.edu.krdVol.5, No.3 (July, 2018) characteristics clarify the value of the tool that investigates the role and position of aggressive behavior in schools.The value of the practice is identified through the student and school reasons that are related to aggression.
Furthermore, Muñoz and Lanzo ( 2007) conducted a study aimed to measure aggressive behavior among Spanish university students.The study is entitled" Physical and psychological aggression in dating relationships in Spanish university students".The population of the study was Spanish university students between 18 and 27 years old.
Their study aimed to analyze the occurrence of violent behaviors of psychological and physical nature.The results indicate a high frequency of both classes of aggression in interpersonal relationships, showing the important of typo-logy differences between the genders.Violent psychological behaviors identified by the rate of the verbal aggression, coercive and jealous behavior's occurrence and physical aggression were obviously higher in women, however the significances of physical aggression were poorer for the women's health .The results, their suggestions, and their possible relation with severer violent acts in more stable, emotional associations are investigated and discussed.
Thus, the purpose of this study is to measure students' aggression in University of Garmian and University of Soran.In addition, the study seeks to make a comparison between the levels of aggression between the two universities.

Methodology Research Design
The current study uses quantitative descriptive methods.It aims to measure students' aggression in the University of Garmian and University of Soran.In addition, the study seeks to make compression at the level of aggression between the two universities.In order to obtain the data, researchers used Orphains & Frankowski's (2001) The Aggression Scale: A Self-Report measure of Aggressive Behavior; to 400 students at Soran University and Garmian University.

Settings
This research was conducted in February 2018 in Garmian University and Soran University in KRG-Iraq.All students who participated in this research were volunteers; the researchers used simple random sampling.

Instruments
The Aggression Scale: A Self-Report measure of Aggressive Behavior by (Orphains& Frankowski, 2001) was used to obtain data for this research.They made a unique acadj@garmian.edu.krdVol.5, No.3 (July, 2018) contribution to the identification of the scope of Aggressive behavior by developing the 11-Likert-Scale-Item.This questionnaire is categorized by the cause of Aggression that may be prevalent among college students.The validity of the questionnaire resulted 94%.In addition, Cronbach's Alpha was used to test validity of the questionnaire, which is 0.87.

Method of Analysis
The descriptive statistical analysis used to analyze the date.The researchers used Statistic package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 21.

Results
Table ).Cohan's d= -1.54.This result shows that there is a statistical difference between the sample mean and hypnotized mean, Hypnotized mean is higher than the sample mean.This finding shows that students, in general, are less aggressive.An independent sample t-test was conducted to compare the statistical differences between male and female.Male (M=19.12.88,SD=11.93) and females (M= 15.05, SD= 4.42; t (398)= 4.45, p= 0.00, two-tailed).The magnitude of the difference in the means (mean differences= 4.06, 95% CI:-2.26 to 5.85).Cohan's d= 0.45.There is a statistical difference between male and female.Even though there is no sign of high aggression from the sample size, but this study shows that female participants received lower aggression.

Discussion
The aim of this study was to measure students' aggression in University of Garmian and University of Soran.Then, the study designed to make compression at the level of aggression between the two universities.After analyzing the obtained data, the study indicated that both university students are less aggressive according to Orphains& Frankowski's (2001) aggression scale.While there were few students who scored high level of aggression in the aggression scale, the majority of both university students were under the aggression level.This might be due to the fact that most of University professors consider good classroom management as the key strategy to prevent possible aggressive behavior.In fact, Oliver and Reschly (2011) study proved that classroom management practices effects on disruptive or aggressive student behavior In addition, the study found out that there were no significant differences between the two universities at the level of aggression.However, Garmian university students showed a slightly higher level of aggression comparing to Soran university students.The reason behind such differences could be due to the weather.Since, Garmian University is located in the south part of Kurdistan Region -Iraq, and its very warm in the most times of the year while Soran University is located in the north part of Kurdistan Region-Iraq where the weather is cooler.Accordingly, the findings of some scholars suggest that higher temperatures lead individual to become more aggressive (Howarth, & Hoffman, 1984;Reifman, Larrick, & Fein,1991) Furthermore, the result showed marginal differences between genders at the level of aggression.The obtained data suggest that male students showed more aggressive behavior than female students.This could be due to the fact that women have not usually been empowered comparing to the males in the Kurdish society.Thus, females tend to be more protective rather than showing their aggressive behavior.This finding is supported by Björkqvist's (1994) study that states "Indirect aggressive strategies have been reported in a number of cultures, and more often among females than among males, although great cultural variation occurs".Furthermore, Lagerspetz & Peltonen's (1988) study showed similar findings.The researchers found out that females tend to have indirect aggression comparing to males.
In conclusion, this study is one of few attempts that aimed to measure aggression among university students in KRG-Iraq.A strong point of this study is that the researchers depended on a reliable scale to measure aggression, which is (Orphains & Frankowski, 2001) The Aggression Scale: A Self-Report measure of Aggressive Behavior.On the other hand, the findings of this research could not be applied to all the University students in KRG-Iraq, since the sample of the study merely represents the two universities.Thus, researchers suggest conducting further studies in this area.Finally, in order to obtain more generalized and reliable result, it is essential to conduct similar study at the other KRG-Iraq universities.

Table 2 :
Aggression difference between Universities