Addressing revisions to the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation scale: Measuring fear of negative evaluation across anxiety and mood disorders

doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.04.002

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Volume 25, Issue 6, August 2011, Pages 822-828

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.04.002 Get rights and content

Abstract

The fear of negative evaluation (FNE) represents a fundamental component of social anxiety and social anxiety disorder (SAD) within modern cognitive-behavioral models (Clark and Wells, 1995, Rapee and Heimberg, 1997). As such, access to comprehensive psychometrics for measures of FNE is an important component of thorough clinical and research efforts. Among the most popular measures of FNE have been variations of the 12-item Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation (BFNE) scale (Leary, 1983). There are currently three versions of the BFNE based on two psychometric studies (i.e., two 8-item variants and a 12-item variant). There is still substantial debate regarding which of the three alternatives should be used by researchers and clinicians. Normative data for each of the three alternatives are not available across samples of individuals with diagnosed anxiety and mood disorders; moreover, there has been no comparative assessment of responses for such samples. The present investigation was to provide more definitive recommendations about the three alternatives, to provide normative clinical data, and to explore differences in FNE endorsement across anxiety and mood disorders. Clinical participants included 381 individuals (60% women; age M = 35.61, SD = 12.49) from an established anxiety treatment and research center. Diagnoses included those with a principal diagnosis of SAD (32%), those with a diagnosis of SAD as an additional disorder (24%), those without a diagnosis of SAD (41%), and those with features of SAD (3%). Results of descriptive analyses, factor analyses, analysis of variance, and receiver operating curves demonstrated that the 12-item variant of the BFNE was inferior or comparable to the two 8-item variants. FNE scores were consistently higher among all participants with a diagnosis of SAD (either principal or additional) relative to all other diagnostic groups (p < .05). Accordingly, the current evidence, as well as parsimony and previous research, supports the utility of the 8-item variant that includes only the original straightforwardly worded items from the BFNE. Comprehensive findings, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

Highlights

► We present an assessment of fear of negative across mood and anxiety disorders. ► We demonstrate factorial invariance across sexes for fear of negative evaluation. ► We provide cutoff score recommendations for fear of negative evaluation. ► We provide evidence for using only the eight straightforwardly worded BFNE items.

Section snippets

Participants

The participants for this study comprised individuals (n = 381; 152 men, [M_age = 36.56; SD = 13.42] and 229 women, [M_age = 34.98; SD = 11.82]) from an established outpatient anxiety treatment and research center. Participants received a principal Axis I diagnosis based upon the disorder that was found to be most disabling at the time of the assessment, including SAD (n = 121; 32%), panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (n = 89; 23%), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; n = 63; 17%), obsessive compulsive

Descriptive statistics and sex comparisons

Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1, with additional values available from the authors upon request. There were no items or summed scale alternatives that demonstrated unacceptable levels of skew or kurtosis (i.e., none had positive standardized skewness values that exceeded 2 or positive standardized kurtosis values that exceeded 7; see (Curran et al., 1996, Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007). There were also no statistically significant differences between men and women (i.e., all ps >

Discussion

The present investigation was designed to examine each of the three FNE alternatives using a large clinical sample that had been diagnostically assessed using a comprehensive semi-structured clinical interview for Axis I disorders. The examinations were designed to accomplish three tasks. First, the overarching intent was to facilitate selecting a BFNE alternative for researchers and clinicians. Second, supporting the first intention, the data present clinically relevant cutoff scores for each

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Addressing revisions to the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation scale: Measuring fear of negative evaluation across anxiety and mood disorders

Abstract

Highlights

Section snippets

Participants

Descriptive statistics and sex comparisons

Discussion

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Journal of Psychiatric Research

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Journal of Psychiatric Research

Comprehensive Psychiatry

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Behavior Therapy

Lancet

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Comprehensive Psychiatry

Social phobia and number of social fears, and their association with comorbidity, health-related quality of life and help seeking: a population-based study

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

Single sample cross-validation indices for covariance structures

Multivariate Behavioral Research

Alternative ways of assessing model fit

Structural equation modeling with amos: basic concepts, applications, and programming

Testing for multigroup invariance using amos graphics: a road less traveled

Structural Equation Modeling

Brief fear of negative evaluation scale-revised

Depression and Anxiety

The illness/injury sensitivity index: an examination of construct validity

Depression and Anxiety

A cognitive model of social phobia

The robustness of test statistics to nonnormality and specification error in confirmatory factor analysis

Psychological Methods

A program to compute McGraw and Wong's common language effect size indicator

Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers