title: Development and initial validation of the medical fear survey-short version.
abstract: The present investigation employs item response theory (IRT) to develop an abbreviated medical fear survey (MFS). Application of IRT analyses in study 1 (n = 931) to the original 50-item MFS resulted in a 25-item shortened version. Examination of the location parameters also resulted in a reduction of the Likert-type scaling of the MFS by removing the last response category ("terror"). The five subscales of the original MFS were highly correlated with those of the MFS-short version. The short version also displayed comparable convergent and discriminant validity with the original MFS in relation to measures of fear, disgust, and anxiety. Confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 revealed that the five-factor structure of the MFS-short form fit the data well in U.S. (n = 283) and Dutch (n = 258) samples. The short form also had comparable convergent and discriminant validity with the original MFS in relation to domains of disgust in both samples. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis in Study 3 demonstrated that the subscales of the short version were comparable with the original MFS in classifying participants high (n = 40) and low (n = 40) in blood/injection phobia. Last, structural equation modeling in Study 4 (n = 113) revealed that the MFS-short form demonstrated excellent convergent/discriminant validity with strong associations with injection fear and no association with spider fear. These findings suggest that the MFS-short form has considerable strengths, including decreased assessment time, while retaining sound psychometric properties.
authors.affiliation: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203, USA. olubunmi.o.olatunji@vanderbilt.edu
authors.forename: Bunmi O
authors.initials: BO
authors.lastname: Olatunji
authors.forename: Chad
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ebesutani
authors.forename: Craig N
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Sawchuk
authors.forename: Dean
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: McKay
authors.forename: Jeffrey M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Lohr
authors.forename: Ronald A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Kleinknecht
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010465:Perception; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D055815:Young Adult