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Background and Objective: The construct of fear of negative evaluation consists of feelings of apprehension about others' evaluations, distress over these negative evaluations, and the expectation that others will evaluate one negatively (1). The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNE) is a measure of a person's tolerance for the possibility they might be judged disparagingly or hostilely by others (2). The aim of this study was to determine the reliability, validity and factorial structure of the Turkish translation of the BFNE-II in male alcohol dependent inpatients.
Methods: Participants were 155 consecutively admitted male alcohol dependents. Patients were investigated with the BFNE-II, the Social Phobia Scale (SPS), the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). The BFNE-II was repeated in 136 of these 155 patients after 2 weeks. The BFNE is composed of 12 items describing fearful or worrying cognition. Eight of the twelve items describe the presence of fear or worrying, while the remaining four items describe the absence of fear or worrying (3). In the BFNE-II (4) reversed items are corrected.
Results: The Turkish version of the BFNE-II was found to be compatible with the original scale. In alcohol dependents the internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) was 0.91 for the BFNE-II. For each of the items, the corrected item-total correlation values were between 0.57 and 0.84 (p<0.001). Test–retest correlations were between 0.28 and 0.53 for items and 0.54 for the total score. The BFNE-II scores were correlated with three measures of social anxiety (the SPS, SIAS, and LSAS) providing evidence of convergent validity.
Conclusions: In the present study the Turkish version of the BFNE-II with 12 items and 2 factor solutions was found to be compatible with the original scale among substance dependent inpatients. Each subscale and the BFNE-II had adequate reliability in terms of internal consistency. The item-subscale and the corrected item-total correlation coefficient values were significant at moderate to high degrees and were stable over two weeks of testing. Finding the BFNE-II factors and total score correlated with related constructs such as the LSA, SPS and SIAS showed concurrent validity. This finding is consistent with previous research demonstrating a positive relationship between the BFNE and other measures of social anxiety (4). Also in support of the discriminant validity of the BFNE-II, individuals with social phobia scored significantly higher on the scale than non-anxious alcohol dependents. The differences in scores on the BFNE-II highlight the discriminant ability of the measure for detecting clinically significant levels of social anxiety. In general, the findings showed promising results and were comparable with most research findings throughout the world (1,2).
References:
1. Watson D, Friend R. Measurement of social–evaluative anxiety. J Consult Clin Psychol 1969;33:448–457.
2. Leary MR. A brief version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale. Pers Soc Psychol 1983; 9:371-375.
3. Carleton RN, McCreary DR, Norton PJ, Asmundson GG. Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation scale revised. Depress Anxiety 2006; 23:297-303.
4. Carleton RN, Collimore KC, Asmundson GJ. Social anxiety and fear of negative evaluation: construct validity of the BFNE-II. J Anxiety Disord 2007;21:131-41. Bulletin of Clinical Psychopharmacology 2011;21(Suppl. 2):S173