The measurement and impact of childhood teasing in a sample of young adults.
This study examined the psychometric properties of the Teasing Questionnaire-Revised (TQ-R) and the relationships among recalled childhood teasing and current psychosocial distress in 414 undergraduate students. Participants were administered the TQ-R, Beck Depression Inventory-II, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait Version, Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, and UCLA Loneliness Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a five-factor model assessing teasing related to performance, academic issues, social behavior, family background, and appearance. Internal consistency of the TQ-R and its factors was acceptable, and intercorrelations among subscales were moderate, suggesting that the factors measure related but conceptually distinct teasing experiences. Defining Pearson product-moment correlations with a magnitude of greater than.25 as conceptually meaningful, we found that the TQ-R Total score was meaningfully related to depressive symptoms, anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and loneliness. Being teased in the Performance and Social domains as a child was moderately related to current psychopathology. Implications of these findings for clinical practice and future research are discussed.
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA. estorch@psychiatry.ufl.edu
Eric A
EA
Storch
Deborah A
DA
Roth
Meredith E
ME
Coles
Richard G
RG
Heimberg
Erica A
EA
Bravata
Jason
J
Moser
D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida; D006801:Humans; D008145:Louisiana; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011581:Psychological Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires