Abstract
The aim of this work is to evaluate the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale-Revised (DPSS-R, 16 items) in two samples taken from the general population. In the first study, 285 participants completed the DPSS-R questionnaire through a web-based survey. Exploratory factor analysis for ordinal Likert-type data supported the existence of four underlying factors, reflecting self-focused disgust, disgust propensity, somatic anxiety and disgust sensitivity. In the second study, an independent sample of 293 participants was enrolled as a test set to validate the factor structure obtained in the exploratory phase. The factor solution was confirmed, but showed quite highly correlated latent factors. We fitted the model and tested whether or not the bifactor structure was better than the previous one (four correlated factors). Actually, we had evidence supporting the presence of a general factor, providing a measure of disgust susceptibility, along with the four specific factors previously defined. This result could be useful also from the clinical perspective since the DPSS-R questionnaire will be used in clinical context, where underlying factors may be related to different and specific psychopathological profiles. Finally, we examined and visualized the interrelationships among the four DPSS-R factors and the external scales (Anxiety Sensitivity, Disgust Scale and Padua) using a graphical model approach.
Highlights
Emotional regulation represents a main topic in psychiatric research, the emotion of disgust received less attention and, until the 90s, disgust processing has been under-investigated (Phillips et al, 1998)
The Authors investigated disgust regulation during the vision of disgusting videos with interesting but preliminary findings and they concluded that future work should deepen their analysis including specific measures about emotion values and beliefs. Following this suggestion and due to the reported controversial findings, which we found in literature, we aimed at validating the Italian version of the DPSS-R questionnaire, and investigated the factor structure and the psychometric properties of the instrument
Very Simple Structure criterion (VSS) criteria suggested the extraction of fewer factors, namely 1 or 2 factors. It has been reported in the literature that VSS criterion is not always optimal and simulation results have shown that this criterion is not appropriate especially when data shows a complex factor structure (Revelle, 2016)
Summary
Emotional regulation represents a main topic in psychiatric research, the emotion of disgust received less attention and, until the 90s, disgust processing has been under-investigated (Phillips et al, 1998). The Disgust Scale (Haidt et al, 1994) and the Disgust Questionnaire (Rozin et al, 1984) were developed within psychometric studies, assessing disgust propensity (DP) in very specific contexts with a lack of generalization of the construct itself (Tolin et al, 2006). The revised version (DPSS-R, van Overveld et al, 2006) consists of 16 items (rated on a 5-point Likert scale) divided into two subscales (each consisting of eight items) which assess respectively DP and Disgust Sensitivity (DS). In the context of psychopathology, DP is described as a general tendency to respond with the emotion of disgust to any given situation (van Overveld et al, 2006), while DS refers to the unpleasant feeling of experiencing the emotion of disgust
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