Social Frustration Level Questionnaire: Substantiation, Design, and Probation

Abstract

The current preventive trends in clinical examination draw attention to the role of the external factors and stressful circumstances in psychodiagnostic research. Social frustration is an incapacity to fulfill relevant social needs because of a current situation. This term makes it possible to qualify criteria for the potential stress related to social functioning among family members, colleagues, and peers. The authors rationalized and tested a formalized questionnaire of Social Frustration Level developed at Bekhterev National Medical Research Centre for Psychiatry and Neurology in 2004 for patients with social adjustment disorders. The experiment justified the criterion validity of the Social Frustration Level Questionnaire. The article describes the structure of social frustration regarding the key spheres of activity attributed to internal and external frustration. The pilot study involved 45 patients with adjustment disorders, who showed significant frustration related to health problems and socio-economic status accompanied with relative satisfaction with interpersonal relations, i.e., family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. The research relied on the method of clinical psychological interview, as well as the Questionnaire of Social Frustration Level and the Integrative Anxiety Test. Personal anxiety and actual anxiety experiences proved to correlate with social frustration. The internal social frustration prevailed over the external one. The Questionnaire of Social Frustration Level proved to be an efficient practical tool to be used in systematic medical psychodiagnostics research, programs of disorder prevention, and psychotherapy.