Validity and clinical utility of the Fear Questionnaire for anxiety-disorder patients.

Abstract

Although the Fear Questionnaire (FQ) has been widely used, its psychometric properties for anxiety disorder patients are still unclear. This study reports the psychometric properties of the FQ with a sample of 251 (178 female and 73 male) anxiety disorder patients. Factor analysis showed a clear 3-factor solution that accounted for 42% of the variance. The 3 factors corresponded to the 3 FQ subscales: Agoraphobia (FQ-Ag), Social Phobia (FQ-Soc), Blood/Injury Phobia. All subscales had moderate-to-high Cronbach's alpha coefficients (range = .71-.83). Patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia (AG) or social phobia (SOC) were discriminated on the basis of the FQ subscales but not the FQ Total. Generalized anxiety disorder patients could not be discriminated using FQ subscales. Also, these findings showed that the psychometric properties of the FQ Anxiety/Depression subscale were sound. Normative data for these patients are presented. The findings suggest that AG patients and SOC patients can be differentiated from other diagnostic groups on the basis of responses to the questionnaire, particularly using the FQ-Ag and FQ-Soc subscales.