The Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale: Psychometric properties in a clinical sample

The hierarchical model of social interaction anxiety and depression: The critical roles of fears of evaluation

“…With respect to the discriminant validity of FNE and FPE, the results of the CFA in the present study corroborate the argument and the findings of and Fergus et al (2009) suggesting that FPE is a characteristic distinct from FNE. This distinction is also supported by the underlying mechanisms argued in the literature.…”

“…Although and Fergus et al (2009) provided evidence for the distinctness of FNE and FPE, these results have not been replicated in a Taiwanese sample. Therefore, before testing the main hypotheses in the current study, we conduct a confirmatory factor analysis to examine the validity of the two-factor structure of FNE and FPE in our sample.…”

“…To our knowledge, no studies have directly addressed this issue. Some relevant evidence has shown that FPE is significantly more strongly related to SIA than to depression; one study, however, has shown that there is no significant difference between these two correlations and that the relationship between FPE and depression remained significant upon controlling for SIA (Fergus et al, 2009;Weeks, Heimberg, Rodebaugh, & Norton, 2008). As a result of these data, it remains unclear whether FPE is related to depression or is a unique quality of SIA because these findings were derived from correlation (or partial correlation) analyses, which were confounded by other shared variances.…”

“…Finally, the major contribution of the current study is the discovery that FPE is significantly associated with SIA, but not depression; this verifies its role as a unique predictor of SIA. Past research has tested the relationship between SIA or depression and FPE using correlation (or partial correlation) analyses (Fergus et al, 2009;Weeks Heimberg, Rodebaugh, & Norton, 2008), and the findings merely and conservatively concluded that FPE was less related to depression than to SIA . This raised the question of whether FPE is unique to SIA.…”

Beyond DSM-5: An alternative approach to assessing Social Anxiety Disorder

“…and Weeks, Heimberg, Rodebaugh, and Norton (2008) found that fear of positive evaluation explained a significant percentage of variance of social anxiety after controlling for fear of negative evaluation. Moreover, Fergus et al (2009) demonstrated that individuals seeking treatment for SAD had higher scores on the Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale than individuals with other anxiety disorders. All concluded that fear of evaluation, rather than a specific fear of negative evaluation, is a more appropriate way to describe SAD.…”