Anatomy of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI): A Review of Previous Findings and a New Approach

Abstract

The White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI; Wegner & Zanakos, 1994) was originally designed to assess people's inclination toward thought suppression. In this article, we provide a detailed review of previous findings on the structure of this instrument and present a study that took a new statistical approach. It involved an exploratory factor analysis of the French WBSI using the weighted least squares mean and variance estimator as well as parametric item response theory analyses. Results clearly supported a 2-factor structure with a "suppression" and an "intrusion" dimension. Follow-up regression analyses revealed that intrusion significantly predicted anxiety and depression scores, whereas suppression did not.

Dreaming and personality: Wake-dream continuity, thought suppression, and the Big Five Inventory

“…Finally, because it has been argued that the WBSI measures the tendency to have intrusive thoughts as well as the tendency to try to supress thoughts, correlations were further performed on the data with a 'Suppression' subscale and an 'Intrusion' subscale, using items that have loaded onto each of these scales respectively across several studies (Schmidt et al, 2009). …”

Mediators of the Link Between Adult Attachment and Mindfulness

“…Items were rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly). Recent investigations into the psychometric properties of the WBSI (Schmidt et al, 2009) have shown that it contains a 9-item subscale measuring the wish to suppress unwanted thoughts (e.g., "There are things I prefer not to think about"). In the present study, this subscale had an alpha coefficient of .86.…”

Validation of a 15‐item Care‐related Regret Coping Scale for Health‐care Professionals (RCS‐HCP)

“…In contrast, a scale for health-care professionals should be general enough to assess coping style in general (i.e., the whole set of strategies used). Second, some instruments only cover some strategies, such as emotion-focused strategies in their work 11,12) . Third, health-care professionals will certainly use some specific problem-focused strategies (e.g., presenting excuses to a patient).…”

“…Construct validity was assessed using measures of health-care professionals' quality of life (including job and life satisfaction, and self-reported health) as well as sleep problems and depression. Results: Based on factor analysis and item response analysis, the initial 31-item scale was shortened to 15 items, which measured three types of strategies: problem-focused strategies (i.e., trying to find solutions, talking to colleagues) and two accepting one's limits 11,12) are good examples of these strategies. Seeking social support is considered either problem or emotion focused depending on its goal.…”