Re-refining the measurement of distress intolerance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.05.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Studies suggest a five factor bifactor model and measure of distress intolerance.

  • New assessment of distress intolerance created from extant distress intolerance scales.

  • Measures uncertainty, ambiguity, physical discomfort, frustration, and negative emotion.

  • Reflects summary accounts of distress intolerance.

  • Consistent with recent empirical attempts to rationalise distress intolerance measurement.

Abstract

The current study aims to present a parsimonious measure of five factors of distress intolerance as proposed by Zvolensky et al. (2010). Exploratory (n = 511) and confirmatory (n = 157) factor analytic studies of items from five established measures of distress intolerance suggest a 20-item measure representing five dimensions of distress intolerance (uncertainty, ambiguity, physical discomfort, frustration, and negative emotion). A comparison of latent factor models suggests that a bifactor model may present the best fit to the data, reflecting the identification of a general factor of distress intolerance while also recognizing the multidimensionality of the five group factors. The current findings suggest a parsimonious measure of five factors of distress intolerance, though further research may consider method and measurement biases and the convergent and discriminant validity of the subscales.

Introduction

Given the plethora of measures that have been used to assess distress intolerance (either through distress intolerance or distress tolerance, and subsequently in this paper simply referred to as distress intolerance), there have been attempts recently to refine its measurement. McHugh and Otto (2012) were the first to comprehensively synthesize a number of distress intolerance measures. They tested whether distress intolerance is comprised of a single construct by analysing the latent factor structure of four measures, including the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (Peterson & Reiss, 1992), the Frustration Discomfort Scale (FDS; Harrington, 2005), the Discomfort Intolerance Scale (DIS; Schmidt, Richey, & Fitzpatrick, 2006), and the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS; Simons & Gaher, 2005). Factor analysis of the subscales scores supported a single-factor latent structure. Furthermore, McHugh and Otto (2012) identified 10 items from the subscales that had the highest degree of concordance with the latent structure. They proposed that these items could be used as an unidimensional measure of distress intolerance.

Bardeen, Fergus, and Orcutt (2013) employed eight indices of distress intolerance to assess the latter’s measurement in line with Zvolensky, Vujanovic, Bernstein, and Leyro’s (2010) summary of the distress intolerance measurement literature, which explores different measures of distress intolerance that have been presented in the literature. The summary suggests that the distress intolerance construct is represented by five distress intolerance constructs: uncertainty, ambiguity, physical discomfort, frustration, and negative emotion. Bardeen et al. confirmed this summary based on a factor analysis of scores from subscales derived from the Intolerance of Uncertainty Index-Part A (Carleton, Gosselin, & Asmundson, 2010), the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (Buhr & Dugas, 2002), the Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance-I (McLain, 1993), the Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale-12 (Herman, Stevens, Bird, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 2010, a revised version of Budner’s (1962) 16-item version), the Somatosensory Amplification Scale (Barsky, Wyshak, & Klerman, 1990), the DIS (Schmidt et al., 2006), the FDS (Harrington, 2005), and the DTS (Simons & Gaher, 2005).

The present study integrates the approaches employed by McHugh and Otto (2012) and Bardeen et al. (2013). McHugh and Otto (2012) provide a parsimonious 10-item unidimensional measure of distress intolerance. Bardeen et al. (2013) provide evidence that distress intolerance comprises five factors. However, the existing literature does not suggest a parsimonious measure that also measures the five factors of distress intolerance. In this study, we aimed to identify individual items from the measures employed by McHugh and Otto (2012) and Bardeen et al. (2013) so that we could measure distress intolerance in terms of its lower-order constructs (uncertainty, ambiguity, physical discomfort, frustration, and negative emotion).

Section snippets

Samples

Two samples of data were collected. Sample 1 was used for an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Sample 2 for a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The first sample comprised 511 respondents (82 males, 429 females) who were either undergraduates or postgraduates enrolled on university courses over a two-year period. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 36 years (M = 19.77, SD = 2.40 years). They were predominantly of a white ethnicity (60.7%, with 12.3% and 11.4% reporting to be black and South

Materials

Across their two studies, McHugh and Otto (2012) and Bardeen et al. (2013) employed nine scales, three of which featured in both studies. In choosing candidates from these nine scales for the current study we aimed to (a) have as much overlap as possible with the two previous studies, (b) obtain a five-factor structure of distress intolerance, (c) administer a number of items that were not too arduous for respondents to complete, and (d) facilitate an adequate item-to-respondent ratio. The

Exploratory factor analysis

The first step of the analysis was to determine the factor structure of the items, using EFA to allow any such structure to emerge. The number of participants (511) to variables (100) ratio exceeded the recommended minimum ratio for EFA of 5 to 1 (with a minimum number of participants of 150) (Gorsuch, 1983). All items were subjected to maximum likelihood analysis (Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy = .91; Bartlett’s test of sphericity, x2 = 24000.39, df = 4950, p < .001).

The decision as

Discussion

Researchers have begun trying to define distress intolerance through parsimonious measures of the construct (e.g. McHugh & Otto, 2012) and assessing the multifaceted nature of the construct (e.g. Bardeen et al., 2013). The findings of this paper integrate these approaches by proposing a 20-item measure that comprises five replicable factors that assess the uncertainty, ambiguity, physical discomfort, frustration, and negative emotion components of distress intolerance, consistent with Zvolensky

References (27)

  • G.W. Cheung et al.

    Evaluating goodness-of-fit indexes for testing measurement invariance

    Structural Equation Modeling

    (2002)
  • R.L. Gorsuch

    Factor analysis

    (1983)
  • N. Harrington

    The frustration discomfort scale: Development and psychometric properties

    Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy

    (2005)
  • Cited by (13)

    • Distress tolerance across substance use, eating, and borderline personality disorders: A meta-analysis

      2022, Journal of Affective Disorders
      Citation Excerpt :

      However, not all studies have replicated this relationship. For example, a recent investigation found that neither behavioural nor self-reported DT significantly predicted alcohol use problems in a sample of undergraduates (Buckheit et al., 2019). Additionally, another study found that problematic alcohol use was significantly associated with self-reported but not behavioural measures of DT (Holzhauer et al., 2017).

    • Re-examination of the Latent Structure of the Distress Intolerance Index

      2021, International Journal of Cognitive Therapy
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text