Turkish adaptation of the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire: Reliability and validity in non-clinical samples

Toward a reliable detection of arachnophobia: subjective, behavioral, and neurophysiological measures of fear response

Introduction

The administration of questionnaires presents an easy way of obtaining important knowledge about phobic patients. However, it is not well known how these subjective measurements correspond to the patient's objective condition. Our study aimed to compare scores on questionnaires and image evaluation to the objective measurements of the behavioral approach test (BAT) and the neurophysiological effect of spiders extracted from fMRI measurements. The objective was to explore how reliably subjective statements about spiders and physiological and behavioral parameters discriminate between phobics and non-phobics, and what are the best predictors of overall brain activation.

Methods

Based on a clinical interview, 165 subjects were assigned to either a "phobic" or low-fear "control" group. Finally, 30 arachnophobic and 32 healthy control subjects (with low fear of spiders) participated in this study. They completed several questionnaires (SPQ, SNAQ, DS-R) and underwent a behavioral approach test (BAT) with a live tarantula. Then, they were measured in fMRI while watching blocks of pictures including spiders and snakes. Finally, the respondents rated all the visual stimuli according to perceived fear. We proposed the Spider Fear Index (SFI) as a value characterizing the level of spider fear, computed based on the fMRI measurements. We then treated this variable as the "neurophysiological effect of spiders" and examined its contribution to the respondents' fear ratings of the stimuli seen during the fMRI using the redundancy analysis (RDA).

Results

The results for fear ranks revealed that the SFI, SNAQ, DS-R, and SPQ scores had a significant effect, while BAT and SPQ scores loaded in the same direction of the first multivariate axis. The SFI was strongly correlated with both SPQ and BAT scores in the pooled sample of arachnophobic and healthy control subjects.

Discussion

Both SPQ and BAT scores have a high informative value about the subject's fear of spiders and together with subjective emotional evaluation of picture stimuli can be reliable predictors of spider phobia. These parameters provide easy and non-expensive but reliable measurement wherever more expensive devices such as magnetic resonance are not available. However, SFI still reflects individual variability within the phobic group, identifying individuals with higher brain activation, which may relate to more severe phobic reactions or other sources of fMRI signal variability.

Construction, Validation, and Standardization of the Sexual‐DSMapp Application

Objective

The aim of this research was to construct, validate, and standardize a new tool for assessing sexual dysfunction. The Sexual‐DSMapp is an application that can be used on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone.

Methods

Of the participants (N=800), 400 met DSM‐5 criteria for clinical dysfunction (the clinical group), and 400 had no dysfunction (the healthy control group). Both groups were 50% male and 50% female. Patients in the clinical group had sexual disorders such as premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, diminished sexual desire, orgasm issues, arousal issues, and dyspareunia but no mental, personality, medical, and/or substance use disorders. Average age for both groups was 34, and the average education level was 11.5 years. Participants were from various localities in Romania and were of differing racial‐ethnic groups.

Results

Fidelity of the app's nine scales on Cronbach's alpha (0.975), Spearman's rank‐order correlation coefficient (0.986), and the Guttman scale (0.969) reached maximum threshold, was significant on test‐retest reliability, and reached a Cronbach's alpha average of 0.89 for the whole questionnaire. For the test scales, results from 0.76 to 0.98 were obtained, and significant correlation was shown with other questionnaires. The result of the Kaiser‐Meyer‐ Olkin test for adequate participant sampling was 0.939. Analysis of variance indicated significance (p<0.001). Correlation with similar questionnaires showed significant validity.

Conclusions

The results of this research suggest that the Sexual‐DSMapp can discriminate between clinical and nonclinical sexual dysfunction and can be used to test and evaluate sexual dysfunctions.

The Sexual‐DSMapp is a new tool for assessing sexual dysfunction that can be used on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone.

The app can discriminate between clinical and nonclinical sexual dysfunction and can test and evaluate sexual dysfunctions.

A standardized tool to assess and test for sexual dysfunction will aid advanced technology users, such as specialists in the field of sexology, or patients with sexual dysfunctions.