Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 5, Issue 3, May 1974, Pages 401-409
Behavior Therapy

Psychometric description of some specific-fear questionnaires*

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This paper deals with questionnaires tapping fears of snakes, spiders, mutilation, and public speaking. Psychometric description of the scales across several samples indicated consistent distribution characteristics. In addition, consistently high reliability estimates were obtained; available results on test-retest reliability and validity were also encouraging. Correlations of these tests with one another and with general measures of anxiety indicated little shared variance. Inclusion of these scales in fear assessment procedures is suggested to promote standardization of evaluation and comparability of results across samples and laboratories.

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*

A report containing a more extensive treatment of the results and copies of the three new scales presented in this paper may also be obtained by writing to the first author.

2

The new scales described in this paper were developed under the auspices of NIMH Grant MH10993 (PJL, principal investigator). Work of the remaining authors was supported by NIMH predoctoral fellowships F01-MH36669 (RK), F01-MH33064 (JEH), F01-MH46172 (TCW), and F01-MH29386 (BGM). Partial support for computer time was provided by grants from the University of Wisconsin Graduate School, University of Rochester College of Arts and Science, and Bowling Green State University Computer Center. We are grateful to Michael Falconer for assistance in data processing; Jean Holland for aid in data collection; and Robert F. Strahan and John B. Todd for helpful editorial suggestions.

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