Abstract
A confirmatory attempt is made to assess the validity of a hierarchic structural model of fears. Using a sample comprising 1,980 adult volunteers in Portugal, the present study set out to delineate the multidimensional structure and hierarchic organization of a large set of feared stimuli by contrasting a higher-order model comprising general fear at the highest level against a first-order model and a unitary fear model. Following a refinement of the original model, support was found for a five-factor model on a first-order level, namely (1) Social fears, (2) Agoraphobic fears, (3) Fears of bodily injury, death and illness, (4) Fears of display to aggressive scenes, and (5) Harmless animals fears. These factors in turn loaded on a General fear factor at the second-order level. However, the firstorder model was as parsimonious as a hierarchic higher-order model. The hierarchic model supports a quantitative hierarchic approach which decomposes fear disorders into agoraphobic, social, and specific (animal and bloodinjury) fears.
Highlights
Taylor proposed a conceptual framework involving a multidimensional structure and hierarchic organization of fears [1]
Studies on the classification and organization of fears and phobias are important as they provide us with insight and hypotheses about the common and specific or non-shared antecedents of fears which uniquely contribute to the development of a well-circumscribed type of fear
Following the proper translation and back-translation procedures in cross-cultural research [12] in relation to the instructions and reduced pool of 52 items from the Fear Survey Schedule III [16], the specific aims of the present study were to (1) study the distributions of the individual fear items, (2) test the validity of a hierarchic structure of fears, taking as point of departure the firstorder dimensional system proposed by Arrindell [8], and (3) examine sex differences in self-reported fears at the scale level to determine whether the usual finding of higher scores for females could be replicated in a Portuguese sample
Summary
Taylor proposed a conceptual framework involving a multidimensional structure and hierarchic organization of fears [1]. A survey of a large number of previous studies has shown that most of the identified fear factors are included in one of the following four categories: (1) social fears (fears of interpersonal events or situations), (2) fears of death, injury, illness, blood or surgical procedures, (3) fears of harmless animals, and (4) agoraphobic (situational) fears These categories represent the major factors of fear, but they are constant, i.e. they have been shown to be invariant across gender, nationality, and sample type, that is, student, community, and clinical samples [2,3,4,5,6]. Rather than taking this dimensional model as point of departure used data from the U.S
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