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A Northern Illinois University graduate student in psychology has developed a unique measurement of fear—a tool that could open new lines of phobia research and be useful to practicing mental health professionals.
The measure focuses on what’s known as “specific phobias,” which are persistent and irrational fears of particular objects or situations.
Occurring in about 10 percent of the general population, these phobias include fears of heights, driving, flying, water, enclosed spaces, medical procedures and animals, such as spiders or snakes. They can disrupt daily life, strain relationships and limit work productivity. In severe cases, they can lead to depression, disability and even suicide.
“Psychologists often conduct client assessments for phobias using self-report measures,” says Kathleen McCraw, a doctoral candidate in NIU’s Ph.D. program in clinical psychology. “But the measurements differ greatly depending on the fear, are generally unsuitable for making comparisons between different phobias and are nonexistent for others.
“For instance, if we want to assess fears of storms or water, both of which are relatively common fears, there are no self-report measures,” she adds.
The inconsistencies prompted McCraw to develop the new Circumscribed Fear Measure (CFM), which allows researchers and clinicians to quantify the severity of a wide range of specific phobias.
“The Circumscribed Fear Measure can be used to measure fear of any specific object or situation, and it also asks questions about a variety of different types of fear symptoms that people might experience,” McCraw says.
McCraw and her adviser, NIU Professor David Valentiner, are publishing their study on development of the measure in an upcoming issue of Psychological Assessment, a journal of the American Psychological Association.
“At this point in time, the CFM is the only measure that we are aware of that is designed to assess the severity of any type of specific fear,” McCraw says.
“This measure will facilitate research studies that directly compare different types of phobias,” she adds. “Additionally, we think therapists will be able to use the CFM to track their clients’ progress throughout therapy.”
McCraw completed development of the CFM for her master’s degree thesis, which earned NIU’s Outstanding Thesis Award. The article published in Psychological Assessment describes how the measure was assembled, tested for validity in a study of nearly 600 participants and refined in a second study of more than 700 participants.
A self-report measure, the CFM asks respondents to identify their most feared object or situation. Respondents are then asked to state whether they strongly or somewhat agree or disagree with 25 statements, such as: “I avoid having to face this object or situation at all costs,” or “When I am faced with that object or situation, I feel faint or dizzy.”
“I expect this paper to be highly cited and Kathleen’s new measure to have a lasting impact on our field,” says co-author Valentiner.
“There was a gap in the literature,” he adds. “Psychologists have been studying specific phobias for a long time, but we’ve been studying them separately and with different measures. While we believe many phobias are just versions of the same disorder, there was no measure that could be used with different stimuli and different situations to compare, for example, a fear of flying with a fear of spiders, heights or enclosed spaces.
“Now we have one tool that can measure the different phobias, and researchers can compare them to determine which ones are more related to each other,” he added. “We think the CFM will help us more clearly understand and appreciate differences between the phobias.”
One example of an area where Valentiner believes the CFM will be useful is in the study of the prevalence of phobias in families. Children with phobias often have phobic parents—but the irrational fears may be very different, such as a fear of storms versus a fear of flying. The CFM will allow researchers to compare severity and further explore the nature of the familial links.
Other areas where the new measure could be useful include studies of gender differences among those with phobias and the role of disgust or revulsion in various fears.
The NIU psychologists note the research was aimed at “specific phobias.” Other types of phobias, such as agoraphobia and social phobia, were not studied in this research. While the CFM was not studied in a clinical setting, the researchers believe therapists may benefit the most from the measure’s utility.
“More study is needed in this area, but we think the CFM will be very useful to clinicians for screening of the severity of fears, for treatment planning and for measuring a patient’s change and progress during treatment,” Valentiner says.