Development of the scrupulosity inventory: A factor analysis and construct validity study

• Published in: Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry 2024-06, Vol.83, p.101926, Article 101926
• Main Authors: Miller, Chris H., Hedges, Dawson W., Brown, Bruce, Olsen, Joseph, Baughan, Elijah C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anxiety disorder; Factor analysis; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Humans; Obsessive Behavior - diagnosis; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - diagnosis; Psychometrics; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; Students
• ISSN: 0005-7916; 1873-7943; 1873-7943
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2023.101926

Scrupulosity, despite its considerable prevalence and morbidity, remains under-investigated. The present study develops and examines the psychometric properties of a comprehensive assessment tool, the Scrupulosity Inventory (SI). The SI, along with other measures of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and perfectionism, were administered to a sample (N = 150) of college undergraduates similar in size to other scale development studies of related measures. We conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the SI, examined its convergent and divergent validity, and assessed its ability to predict categorical diagnoses of scrupulosity using a receiver operator characteristic analysis. We found a well-fitting confirmatory bifactor model (RMSEA = 0.049) with a strong general Scrupulosity factor (ωHS=0.907) and specific factors for Personal Violations (ωHS=0.212), Ritualized Behavior (ωHS=0.505), Interference with Life (ωHS=0.254), and Problem Pervasiveness (ωHS=0.430). As predicted, we also found the strongest convergence (r = 0.63) between the SI and the Penn Inventory of Scrupulosity (PIOS), intermediate convergence (r = 0.54) between the SI and Perfectionism Inventory (PI), and weaker convergence (r = 0.47) between the SI and YBOCS. Finally, we found that a categorical diagnosis of scrupulosity was highly predicted by the SI (AUC = 0.84), less well-predicted by the PIOS (AUC = 0.75) and less well predicted by the YBOCS (AUC = 0.69). This study was conducted among a sample of undergraduates at a religiously affiliated university. These results suggest utility in using the SI to measure the severity of scrupulosity symptoms and that scrupulosity and OCD may present significantly different clinical features. •The SI is a self-report inventory that measures scrupulosity symptoms.•The SI shows sound psychometric properties.•A five-factor model structure of the SI was obtained.•Divergence exists between scrupulosity and obsessive-compulsive disorder.•The SI may be used in the future for research and clinical assessments.