Unit:
Τομέας Κοινωνικής Ιατρικής - Ψυχιατρικής και ΝευρολογίαςLibrary of the School of Health Sciences
Author:
Chalimourdas Theodoros
Dissertation committee:
Παπαγεωργίου Χαράλαμπος, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Πεχλιβανίδης Αρτέμιος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Τζινιέρη – Κοκκώση Μαρία, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Ζέρβας Ιωάννης, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Τσάλτα Ελευθερία, Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Μασδράκης Βασίλειος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Γονιδάκης Φραγκίσκος, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Ιατρική, ΕΚΠΑ
Original Title:
Η διερεύνηση του βασικού συναισθήματος της αηδίας σε ελληνικό πληθυσμό
Translated title:
Psychometric properties, factor structure, and evidence for mesrurement invariance in the greek version of the disgust scale - revised (DSR)
Summary:
Disgust has been categorized as a basic emotion by many researchers and scholars and can be identified across cultures. The basic emotion of disgust has been thoroughly investigated the last few years. Disgust is defined as the repulsive feeling caused by the prospect of eating a detestable object. Recently, it has been suggested that disgust has been evolved as a psychological system that protects the organism from infection by motivating behavioral avoidance of possible contaminants. The individual ease or tendency to experience disgust more quickly and intensively is termed as disgust propensity. Disgust propensity has been shown to be associated with various forms of psychopathology including contamination-based Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, spider phobia, blood-injection-injury phobia, eating disorders, depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among others. Consequently, a valid measurement of disgust propensity is of high importance as it could be used to gain more insight on the symptoms.
The Disgust Scale-Revised (DS-R) (Olatunji et al., 2007) has been designed to measure the Disgust Propensity and consists of three factors: Core Disgust, Contamination Disgust and Animal Reminder. Given the satisfactory psychometric characteristics of the DS-R and its wide use in studies that have investigated the association between disgust and clinical symptoms, this scale was chosen to be translated and tested in the Greek population. The main aim of the present study was to investigate the emotion of disgust in the Greek population and to examine the psychometric properties of the Greek version of the DS-R.
A sample of 754 healthy participants completed the Greek version of the DS-R. A subset (n = 363) also completed the revised Symptom checked list and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, in order to examine the concurrent validity. Exploratory and Confirmatory factor analyses in different subsets were used to examine the factor structure. Multiple indicators–multiple causes model (MIMIC) models were used to assess the measurement invariance across gender and age. Demographic influences were assessed using t-tests, ANOVA, and Pearson’s correlations. Finally, reliability of the scale was evaluated using the Cronbach’s alpa coefficient for the internal consistency and the intra-class correlation coefficient for the test-retest reliability.
Exploratory factor analysis concluded to two and three factor models, with a factor structure similar to the ones proposed in the literature. However, some differences between the three-factor model of this study and the proposed one as two factors consisted of items from both the Core and Contamination Disgust. Confirmatory factor analysis provided evidence in favor of the three-factor solution. However, bi-factor analysis revealed the importance of the general factor of disgust that might be superior to the three factor model. The measurement invariance test revealed differences in six items across gender, and three items across age. Reliability of the scale was also shown to be satisfactory. Regarding the demographic characteristics, women had higher scores than men in all three subscales, higher levels religiousness correlated with the DS-R scores and there was also a weak but significant correlation between age and Contamination Disgust. Finally, the correlations between the DS-R , the EPQ and the SCL-90-R subscales revealed evidence of discriminant and concurrent validity.
The present study showed satisfactory psychometric properties for the Greek version of the DS-R, making it suitable for use in the Greek population, for both clinical and research work. However, it also revealed some issues of the dimensionality of the scale which should be further investigated and addressed in future studies.
Main subject category:
Health Sciences
Keywords:
Disgust propensity, Greek people, Psychometric properties
Number of references:
205
