Approbation of “Intolerance of uncertainty scale” (IUS) in Russian language

Abstract

Background. The relevance of the work is due to the lack of modern tools for assessing the degree of intolerance to uncertainty, suitable for use in clinical practice and adapted to the Russian-speaking sample. 

Objective. The purpose of the work was to translate the “Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale — IUS” (Freeston et al., 1994) into Russian, to test the resulting version on the Russian-speaking sample, comparing its factor structure with the structure of original scale and its other language variants. 

Methods. “Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale” adapted in Russian, statistical methods of analysis (Cronbach’s alpha, factor analysis). 

Sample. 155 patients with a chronic incurable somatic disease (50 people with multiple sclerosis and 105 patients with complicated arterial hypertension). 

Results. The data obtained during the scale approbation demonstrated high internal consistency (α = 0.912). As a result of the factor analysis, the factor structure of the original scale has repeated (5 factors, 54.85% of the total variance). Five factors have been identified as follows: 1) “Uncertainty is frustrating and leads to inability to act”; 2) “Uncertainty does not allow to relax”, 3) the factor “Uncertainty interferes with planning and productivity in life”, 4) the factor “Uncertainty causes stress and should be avoided”, 5) the factor “To be in a state of uncertainty is to be imperfect and disorganized”. 

Conclusion. The Russian-language version of the “Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale” (IUS) has a factor structure similar to the original scale structure as well as high consistency, which allows to use it in the future studies on the Russian-speaking samples. Further work on testing this technique supposes increasing the clinical sample and testing the scale on the non-clinical samples.

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