اضطراب اجتماعی و ترس از ارزیابی منفی: اعتبار سازه BFNE-II

The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale [BFNE; Leary, M. R. (1983). A brief version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9, 371–375] is a self-report measure designed to assess fear of negative evaluation, a characteristic feature of social anxiety disorders [Rapee, R. M., & Heimberg, R. G. (1997). A cognitive-behavioral model of anxiety in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 741–756]. Recent psychometric assessments have suggested that a 2-factor model is most appropriate, with the first factor comprising the straightforwardly worded items and the second factor comprising the reverse-worded items [Carleton, R. N., McCreary, D., Norton, P. J., & Asmundson, G. J. G. (in press-a). The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Revised. Depression & Anxiety; Rodebaugh, T. L., Woods, C. M., Thissen, D. M., Heimberg, R. G., Chambless, D. L., & Rapee, R. M. (2004). More information from fewer questions: the factor structure and item properties of the original and brief fear of negative evaluation scale. Psychological Assessment, 2, 169–181; Weeks, J. W., Heimberg, R. G., Fresco, D. M., Hart, T. A., Turk, C. L., Schneier, F. R., et al. (2005). Empirical validation and psychometric evaluation of the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale in patients with social anxiety disorder. Psychological Assessment, 17, 179–190]. Some researchers recommend the reverse-worded items be removed from scoring [e.g., Rodebaugh, T. L., Woods, C. M., Thissen, D. M., Heimberg, R. G., Chambless, D. L., & Rapee, R. M. (2004). More information from fewer questions: the factor structure and item properties of the original and brief fear of negative evaluation scale. Psychological Assessment, 2, 169–181; Weeks, J. W., Heimberg, R. G., Fresco, D. M., Hart, T. A., Turk, C. L., Schneier, F. R., et al. (2005). Empirical validation and psychometric evaluation of the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale in patients with social anxiety disorder. Psychological Assessment, 17, 179–190]; however [Carleton, R. N., McCreary, D., Norton, P. J., & Asmundson, G. J. G. (in press-a). The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Revised. Depression & Anxiety; Collins, K. A., Westra, H. A., Dozois, D. J. A., & Stewart, S. H. (2005). The validity of the brief version of the fear of negative evaluation scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 19, 345–359] recommend that these items be reworded to maintain scale sensitivity. The present study examined the reliability and validity of the BFNE-II, a version of the BFNE evaluating revisions of the reverse-worded items in a community sample. A unitary model of the BFNE-II resulted in excellent confirmatory factor analysis fit indices. Moderate convergent and discriminant validity were found when BFNE-II items were correlated with additional independent measures of social anxiety [i.e., Social Interaction Anxiety & Social Phobia Scales; Mattick, R. P., & Clarke, J. C. (1998). Development and validation of measures of social phobia scrutiny fear and social interaction anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 455–470], and fear [i.e., Anxiety Sensitivity Index; Reiss, S., & McNally, R. J. (1985). The expectancy model of fear. In S. Reiss, R. R. Bootzin (Eds.), Theoretical issues in behaviour therapy (pp. 107--121). New York: Academic Press. and the Illness/Injury Sensitivity Index; Carleton, R. N., Park, I., & Asmundson, G. J. G. (in press-b). The Illness/Injury Sensitivity Index: an examination of construct validity. Depression & Anxiety). These findings support the utility of the revised items and the validity of the BFNE-II as a measure of the fear of negative evaluation. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNE; Leary, 1983) is a measure of a person's tolerance for the possibility they may be judged disparagingly or hostilely by others (Leary, 1983). As a latent construct, fear of negative evaluation is believed to promote the development and expression of more general fears, anxiety, and psychopathologies (Miller, 1995 and Reiss and McNally, 1985). This latent fear is partially heritable, related to trait anxiety, and social avoidance (Stein, Jang, & Livesley, 2002). Given the necessity for positive, successful social interaction, particularly for persons in need of therapy (Alden & Taylor, 2004; Segrin, 2001), increased understanding of the effects of fear of negative evaluation and its correlates are crucial. Several cognitive models, as well as previous research, support the notion that social anxiety is derived in part from fears of perceived negative evaluation (e.g., Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). People with social anxiety demonstrate a variety of behaviours to avoid negative evaluation (Wells et al., 1995) and have attentional biases for detecting social-evaluative threats (Asmundson & Stein, 1994; Heinrichs & Hofmann, 2001; Vassilopoulos, 2005); however, this sensitivity to social threat is believed to be based on implicit and automatic responses determined by stimulus relevance (Philippot & Douilliez, 2005). Socially anxious people have lower levels of confidence in their perceived social skills (Lundh & Sperling, 2002; Stopa & Clark, 1993) related primarily to fear of negative evaluation (Izgiç, Akyüz, Dogan, & Kugu, 2004; Rapee & Lim, 1992; Rodebaugh & Chambless, 2002). Not surprisingly, fear of negative evaluation has also been associated with increased shyness (Miller, 1995), the development of eating disorders (Gilbert & Meyer, 2005; Lundgren, Anderson, & Thompson, 2004), and lower self-esteem (Kocovski & Endler, 2000). A recent resurgence in BFNE investigations (e.g., Carleton, McCreary, Norton, & Asmundson, in press-a; Rodebaugh et al., 2004 and Weeks et al., 2005) was sparked by questions regarding the psychometric properties and utility of some BFNE items. These questions stemmed from concerns about the reverse-worded items included in its repertoire. The original BFNE comprises 12 five-point Likert scale items—8 straightforwardly worded and 4 reverse-worded. Unfortunately, the reverse-worded items were consistently forming a methodologically based factor during psychometric assessment of the scale (Carleton et al., in press-a, Rodebaugh et al., 2004 and Weeks et al., 2005). Given that a second factor was in contrast to prior theoretically based assumptions of BFNE unity (e.g., Leary, 1983; Stopa & Clark, 2001), several potential revisions were proposed. First, Weeks et al., 2005 suggested reverse-worded items could be left unaltered but not scored. Second, Rodebaugh et al. (2004) suggested the use of a shortened BFNE, containing only the straightforwardly worded items. Third, Carleton et al. (in press-a) recommended that the reverse-worded items could be reworded as per Taylor's (1993) revisions, rather than risk a loss of sensitivity and underestimation of fear of negative evaluation. Previous work with the BFNE has been to increase its sensitivity (Oei, Kenna, & Evans, 1991; Rodebaugh et al., 2004; Turner, McCanna, & Beidel, 1987), so a loss would seem to be regressive. Subsequent to the Carleton et al. (in press-a) revision, Collins, Westra, Dozois, and Stewart (2005) demonstrated good reliability, sensitivity, and validity in two clinical samples (social phobia and panic disorder) having also reworded the four reverse-worded items in fashion akin to Taylor (1993). Although the revisions used by Collins et al. (2005) were very similar to Taylor's (1993), they were not verbatim. Typical divergences included the original BFNE item 4 (“I rarely worry about what kind of impression I am making on someone”) being reworded by Collins et al. (2005) to read, “I worry about what kind of impression I am making on someone” whereas Taylor's revision reads, “I worry about what kind of impression I make on people.” Conversely, the most extreme disparity involved original BFNE item 7 (“Other people's opinions of me do not bother me”), which was reworded by Collins et al. (2005) to read, “Other people's opinions of me bother me” whereas Taylor's (1993) revision reads, “I am concerned about other people's opinions of me.” A Likert difference also exists, as Carleton et al. (in press-a) used a numbering scale that matched other fundamental fears (0–4) whereas Collins et al. (2005) used (1–5). Beyond these discrepancies, both of the Collins et al. (2005) samples were clinical, requiring that additional investigation be done for evaluations with a non-clinical sample. Alternatively, Carleton et al. (in press-a) were limited in that a community sample was used but no measures of convergent validity were available. Ideally, validation in a non-clinical population would be achieved by correlating the revised BNFE with other independent measures of social anxiety and fear. Further, the revised BFNE would benefit from a second confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) which would underscore the unitary factor structure of the measure as well as partition correlational comparisons of the eight originally straightforwardly worded items and the four revised items. These analyses would confirm the removal of the methodologically based (see Marsh, 1996; Spector, Van Katwyk, Brannick, & Chen, 1997) second factor and the utility of the four revised items (Carleton et al., in press-a). The purpose of the present investigation was threefold. First, to confirm the unitary factor structure of Carleton et al.'s revised BFNE (BFNE-II) with an independent sample, revising as required. Second, to demonstrate convergent validity with measures related to social anxiety (Kocovski & Endler, 2000) and discriminant validity with construct-independent measures of other fundamental fears (Taylor, 1993). Specifically, scores on the BFNE-II should correlate positively with measures of social anxiety. Furthermore, there should be a positive correlation between the BFNE-II and the Social subscale of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (Reiss & McNally, 1985), but less so with other anxiety sensitivity subscales and illness and injury sensitivity (e.g., Illness/Injury Sensitivity Index; Carleton et al., in press-b). Finally, the data will establish non-clinical norms for the BFNE-II.