Sex differences are not attenuated by a sex-invariant measure of fear: The situated fear questionnaire

• Published in: Personality and individual differences 2016-07, Vol.97, p.210-219
• Main Authors: Campbell, Anne, Coombes, Claire, David, Raluca, Opre, Adrian, Grayson, Lois, Muncer, Steven
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anxiety; Avoidance; Fear; Fear survey schedule; Mokken; Rasch; Sex difference; Sex invariance
• ISSN: 0191-8869; 1873-3549
• DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.049

Widely-used fear questionnaires may exaggerate sex differences because they do not ensure sex invariance of items and conflate anxiety with fear. Beginning with 50 descriptions of fear-eliciting situations, we used Rasch analysis to identify sex-invariant items and Mokken analysis to establish unidimensional scalability. The resulting 27-item Situated Fear Questionnaire (SFQ) correlated highly with the widely-used Fear Survey Schedule, while demonstrating better discrimination between anxiety and fear. Sex differences in three samples were all in excess of d=1.00 and were not explained by gender role adherence or anxiety levels. The hedonic tone associated with fear situations (ranging from distressing/alarming to thrilling/exhilarating) was rated as more positive by men and this was only partially explained by their lower reported fear. •Items on existing fear inventories may misrepresent the magnitude of sex differences.•Rasch and Mokken analyses were used to select sex-invariant scalable items.•Across 3 samples, the sex differences (d) were all greater than unity.•This was not attributable to gender role conformity or women's higher anxiety.•Men found fear situations less distressing than women.