Validation of the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form in a Flemish Community Sample

Abstract

The Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ, Young, 1994) was developed to assess Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS), which account for the dysfunctional beliefs in individuals with personality disorders or maladaptive personality traits. This study aims to investigate the factor structure, the reliability and the validity of the original YSQ – Short Form (Young & Brown, 1998; YSQ-SF, 15 EMS) as well as an extension including 16 EMS, based on the 16 factor structure of the YSQL2 (Young & Brown, 1998) in a community sample. The sample consisted of 672 participants (51% females; Mage-total = 44.34; SDage-total = 16.24). Results show evidence for both the 15 and 16 factor solution of the YSQ-SF with good internal consistency coefficients for the different scales. Significant gender differences were observed for Self-Sacrifice (females higher) and Entitlement (men higher), along with different patterns of correlations between age and Insufficient Self-Control (r = –.19), Enmeshment (r = –0.16) and Self-Sacrifice (r = .13). Furthermore, Big Five personality traits were significantly associated with several schema scales. In sum, we can conclude that both the YSQ-SF15 and 16 are valid instruments to assess EMS among a Flemish community sample. However, given the unique additive value of the 16th EMS (Social Undesirability) in predicting lower scores on Extraversion and Openness, the use of the YSQ-SF16 could be favored.

Early maladaptive schemas: Similarities and differences between female patients with eating versus substance use disorders

“…The YSQ‐SF16 is based on the well‐validated YSQ‐SF (Young & Brown, ; review Oei & Baranoff, ) and the addition of a shortened version of the Social Undesirability Scale. The YSQ‐SF16 as a whole shows also good psychometric properties in a nonclinical sample (Pauwels, Dierckx, Smits, Janssen, & Claes, ). α values in the current sample ranged from 0.70 (Subjugation) to 0.94 (Failure to Achieve) and are considered to be good (Nunnally & Bernstein, ).…”

Early maladaptive schemas impact on long-term outcome in patients treated with group behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder

“…YSQ-SF is widely used across cultures and translations (e.g. Canada: [42], Belgium [43];, Spain [44], Britain [41], Australia and South-Korea [45]) and has shown good to excellent consistency both for the YSQ total score and the individual EMSs in Norwegian samples [46, 47]. The Norwegian version of YSQ-SF has been translated back to English with no substantial differences in meaning from the American version for the 75-item scale [46].…”

The Relationship Between Early Maladaptive Schemas and Cluster C Personality Disorder Traits: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…EMSs were measured by the 90-item YSQ-S3 [ 49 ] ( n = 3), the 75-item YSQ-SF [ 47 ] ( n = 3), and the 2 nd edition of the 205-item YSQ-LF [ 45 ] ( n = 3). One study [ 64 •] used the Turkish adaptation of the YSQ-S3 3 [ 65 ], while Pauwels et al [ 63 •] and Steylaerts et al [ 66 •] employed the 16-factor Dutch versions of the YSQ-LF [ 67 ] and YSQ-SF 4 [ 68 ], respectively.…”

“…Three potentially moderating variables would be of major concern; the population (i.e., clinical and non-clinical), the type of PD assessment (i.e., self-report instruments and semi-structured interviews), and the YSQ version. Regarding this last point, it is important to mention that research on the primary and higher-order factor structure of the various YSQ versions employed across the included studies has produced heterogeneous and often psychometrically problematic results (e.g., 14 and 16 primary factors in the Turkish [ 65 ] and Dutch [ 67 , 68 ] versions, respectively; several items cross-loading and/or not loading on any domain in the English version of the YSQ-L3 [ 38 ] and the Danish version of the YSQ-S3 [ 69 •]). This raises concern over construct validity and hence, could have biased our results as the assumed latent variables (i.e., EMSs) across the 12 included studies might not be directly comparable (see [ 38 , 101 ] for a detailed discussion on this issue).…”