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.
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).
