Shared Variance Among Self-Report and Behavioral Measures of Distress Intolerance

Distress intolerance may be an important individual difference variable in understanding maladaptive coping responses across diagnostic categories. However, the measurement of distress intolerance remains inconsistent across studies and little evidence for convergent validity among existing measures...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive therapy and research 2011-06, Vol.35 (3), p.266-275
Main Authors: McHugh, R. Kathryn, Daughters, Stacey B., Lejuez, Carl W., Murray, Heather W., Hearon, Bridget A., Gorka, Stephanie M., Otto, Michael W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affectivity. Emotion
Anxiety
Behavior
Biological and medical sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Drug use
Emotional regulation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Medical sciences
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Methodology. Experimentation
Original Article
Personality. Affectivity
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Quality of Life Research
Techniques and methods
Validity
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Summary:Distress intolerance may be an important individual difference variable in understanding maladaptive coping responses across diagnostic categories. However, the measurement of distress intolerance remains inconsistent across studies and little evidence for convergent validity among existing measures is available. This study evaluated the overlap among self-report and behavioral measures of distress intolerance in four samples, including an unselected sample, a sample of patients with drug dependence, and two samples of cigarette smokers. Results suggested that the self-report measures were highly correlated, as were the behavioral measures; however, behavioral and self-report measures did not exhibit significant associations with each other. There was some evidence of domain specificity, with anxiety sensitivity demonstrating strong associations with somatic distress intolerance, and a lack of association between behavioral measures that elicit affective distress and those that elicit somatic distress. These findings highlight a potential divergence in the literature relative to the conceptualization of distress intolerance as either sensitivity to distress or as the inability to persist at a task when distressed. Further research is needed to elucidate the conceptualization and measurement of distress intolerance to facilitate future clinical and research applications of this construct.
ISSN:0147-5916
1573-2819
DOI:10.1007/s10608-010-9295-1