Assessment of Disgust Sensitivity in Children With an Age-Downward Version of the Disgust Emotion Scale

Peter Muris*, Jorg Huijding, Birgit Mayer, Marit Langkamp, Ela Reyhan, Bunmi Olatunji

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Disgust Emotion Scale for Children (DES-C). Principal components analysis of the DES-C data revealed five factors reflecting disgust toward (a) rotting foods, (b) injection and blood, (c) odors, (d) mutilation and death, and (e) animals, which were largely in keeping with the intended subscales. The DES-C showed good reliability, excellent convergent validity (as established by correlations with an alternative self-report index of disgust), fairly good predictive validity (as assessed by correlations with measures of fear/anxiety and a behavioral index of disgust), and acceptable parent-child agreement (in particular with the mothers). Importantly, the DES-C proved to perform better on some psychometric indicators than an age-downward version of the Disgust Scale. These findings indicate that the DES-C should be regarded as the preferred scale for measuring disgust sensitivity and its role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety problems in children.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)876-886
Number of pages11
JournalBehavior Therapy
Volume43
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2012

Keywords

  • Assessment
  • Children
  • Disgust sensitivity
  • Fear and anxiety symptoms

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Assessment of Disgust Sensitivity in Children With an Age-Downward Version of the Disgust Emotion Scale'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this