Measurement of Risk-Taking in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Abstract

A measure of everyday risk-taking, the Everyday Risk Inventory (ERI), was developed to assess avoidance of potentially harmful ordinary activities, and some of its psychometric properties were studied. The hypothesis that outpatients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) would score lower than non-patients on this and other measures of risk-taking was tested. The ERI showed good internal consistency and excellent test-retest reliability. It successfully differentiated OCD patients from non-clinical subjects. Consistent with research on sensation seeking, both age and gender were related to ERI scores, with older subjects and females showing greater risk avoidance. The ERI correlated moderately strongly with other measures of risk-taking and showed, as expected, a less strong negative association with measures of responsibility and value orthodoxy. Preliminary findings indicate that the ERI is a useful instrument for assessing non-pleasurable ordinary risk-taking. Findings are discussed in relation to possible dimensions of risk-taking in existing research on decision-making and the need for research on other patient populations.