Are We Certain about Which Measure of Intolerance of Uncertainty to Use Yet?

Authors

Vincenzo G. Roma, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Debra A. Hope, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

ORCID IDs

Debra A. Hope

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy 46:4 (2017), pp. 327–338.

doi: 10.1080/16506073.2016.1252792

Comments

Copyright © 2016 Swedish Association for Behaviour Therapy; published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Used by permission.

Abstract

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) has been understood as a dispositional tendency to view the presence of negative events as unacceptable and threatening, regardless of the likelihood of those events occurring. The preference over the 12-item vs. 27-item of the IUS has been central to debate. The goals of the present study were to evaluate two competing models of measuring IU with model-fitting analyses and explore model invariance of gender (e.g., men vs. women). A sample of 980 individuals completed an online IUS survey. Results indicated that the two-factor short-form model provided better fit to the data compared to the full-length two-factor model. Results also indicated that the short-form IUS is gender invariant, suggesting acceptable use among men and women. These findings provide further support of a two-factor structure and suggest that the IUS is appropriate for men and women.