ABSTRACT

Medical Fear Survey (MFS) was designed to assess the fear of medical treatments and related factors through five dimensions including fears of injections and blood draws, sharp objects, blood, mutilation, medical examination and physical symptoms. We analysed the factor structure and validity of a short version of MFS in Hungarian, on a large sample (2631 participants; 558 men, 2067 women) focusing on possible age and gender differences (aged Mean = 30.4, SD = 13.4), which were not reported for the original version. Furthermore, using discriminant analysis, potential screening function of the MFS-short was examined. Results supported construct and convergent validity and scale-reliability for the five-factor structure of the MFS-short. Further analyses demonstrated excellent discriminatory power for four subscales, while one subscale had acceptable power. Our findings provide implications for the utility of MFS-short as a screening measure in assessing the severity of medical fears controlling for gender differences and age-biases.

摘要

医疗恐惧调查（MFS）旨在通过五个维度评估对医疗的恐惧和相关因素，包括对注射和抽血的恐惧、锐器、血液、肢解、体检和身体症状。我们在大样本（2631 名参与者；558 名男性，2067 名女性）上分析了匈牙利语 MFS 短版的因子结构和有效性，重点关注可能的年龄和性别差异（年龄平均值 = 30.4，SD = 13.4），原始版本未报告。此外，使用判别分析，检查了 MFS-short 的潜在筛选功能。结果支持 MFS-short 的五因素结构的结构效度和收敛效度以及量表信度。进一步的分析表明，四个分量表具有出色的区分能力，而一个分量表具有可接受的能力。我们的研究结果为 MFS-short 的效用提供了启示，作为一种筛查措施，用于评估控制性别差异和年龄偏见的医疗恐惧的严重程度。