Confirming the Three-Factor Structure of the Disgust Scale—Revised in Eight Countries

Abstract

The current study evaluates the factor structure of the Disgust Scale—Revised (DS-R) in eight countries: Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States ( N = 2,606). Confirmatory factor analysis is used to compare two different models of the DS-R and to investigate the invariance of the factor structure of the DS-R across countries and gender. A three-factor solution consisting of three different but interrelated disgust factors (a 12-item core disgust factor, an 8-item animal-reminder disgust factor, and a 5-item contamination disgust factor) best accounted for the data in all countries except the Netherlands. Relative to the United States, the three-factor solution is invariant in Australia, Brazil, and Japan but not in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The three-factor solution is also invariant across gender in most countries. The implications of these cross-cultural findings for promoting a more valid and reliable assessment of disgust dimensions, as assessed by the DS-R, are discussed.

The role of disgust propensity in blood-injection-injury phobia: Comparisons between Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans

“…The DS has been utilised to examine the role of disgust in phobias, including BII phobia (e.g., Sawchuk et al, 2002;Teachman & Saporito, 2009). For the current study, three dimensions, Animal-reminder, Core, and Contamination, were formed, as previously reported using a cross-national sample (Olatunji et al, 2009). The Animal-reminder dimension has 12 items (6 trueÁfalse items and 6 Likert-scaled items), the Core dimension has eight items (5 trueÁfalse items and 3 Likert-scaled items), and the Contamination dimension has five items (2 trueÁfalse items and 3 Likert-scaled items), 25 items in total out of the 32 original items.…”

“…The Animal-reminder dimension has 12 items (6 trueÁfalse items and 6 Likert-scaled items), the Core dimension has eight items (5 trueÁfalse items and 3 Likert-scaled items), and the Contamination dimension has five items (2 trueÁfalse items and 3 Likert-scaled items), 25 items in total out of the 32 original items. Following Olatunji et al (2009), a mean of the trueÁfalse items (0 or 1) and a mean of the Likertscaled items (0, 0.5, or 1) were calculated separately and then the mean of these two scores was used for each dimension subscale. Scores range from 0 to 1.…”

“…In their study, food, body products, odour, hygiene, and animal-related disgust loaded onto core disgust and sex, body envelope violations, body piercing, and death loaded onto animal-reminder disgust. More recently, a large cross-national study suggested three dimensions of disgust: core, animal-reminder, and contamination (Olatunji et al, 2009). The contamination dimension in this model includes hygiene-related items, while the core and animal-reminder dimensions include items largely consistent with the above models.…”

On the role of goal relevance in emotional attention: Disgust evokes early attention to cleanliness

“…In order to administer disgust propensity (the dispositional proneness to feel disgust) we used the Disgust Scale-Revised (DS-R; Olatunji et al, 2007; see also Olatunji et al, 2009). This questionnaire measures the disgust propensity of an individual across seven domains of disgust elicitors.…”

Don't rush to flush

“…In additional to the urine-specific disgust questions described above, contamination-based disgust sensitivity was assessed using an abbreviated scale adapted from Haidt et al, 1994 andOlatunji et al, 2009 …”