The Skin Satisfaction Questionnaire – an Instrument to Assess Attitudes toward the Skin in Healthy Persons and Patients

Abstract

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to construct a questionnaire on skin satisfaction (SSQ = HautZuf) suitable to assess satisfaction and attitudes toward one’s skin, to be used with dermatology and other patients as well as with healthy subjects. In this sense, the SSQ expands the existing spectrum of dermatological-psychosomatic/psychological questionnaires, which primarily address issues like coping with disease, quality of life, stigmatization and disease-specific problems, and includes underlying deep-psychological aspects such as the role of the skin in regulating closeness and distance. Patients and Methods: The a priori scales contained 69 items and were constructed on the basis of theoretical considerations about feelings of shame and disgust, closeness and distance, sexuality, affection and the skin-self. An experts’ rating of the contents and a pilot phase in which laymen tested comprehensibility of the items preceded development of the questionnaire. After this, 185 subjects from three groups were recruited (group 1: secondary school certification students in adult education programs, n = 54; group 2: patients in the psychosomatic outpatient clinic, n = 67; group 3: medical students in their first semester, n = 64). After exclusion of items with frequently missing data (>5%) and extremely skewed distribution, 50 items entered the factor analysis which was computed on complete data sets of 167 subjects. Results: Scree test suggested a 5-factor solution which explained 38.3% of the variance. Finally, an item pool of 32 items crystallized, which were assigned to the following 5 areas: partnership touching, shame, family touching, disgust and self-touching. All scales showed good internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha: 0.74–0.80; split-half reliability: 0.72–0.81). Intercorrelations between scales were low except for the touching scales. Correlations with the Giessen Test (GT), a German personality questionnaire, were comprehensible but rather low, indicating that the SSQ asks for a specific spectrum of psychological characteristics. Conclusion: The SSQ is a useful test instrument which assesses a broad range of parameters on specific psychosocial aspects of skin perception, skin satisfaction and attitudes toward the skin, suitable for healthy persons as well as (skin) patients.

Suicidal Ideation in Adult Patients with Atopic Dermatitis: A German Cross-sectional Study

“…Skin satisfaction. The Skin Satisfaction Questionnaire (SSQ) (30) was constructed to assess satisfaction with attitudes towards one's skin from a psychological point of view. It can be used among dermatological patients as well as persons with healthy skin.…”

Clinical Management in Psychodermatology

“…A variant of the MHF, age-appropriately adapted by Kupfer et al (2003), is given in the form of two questionnaires for children: the CopeKi, for children between 8 and 12 years of age, and the CopeJu, for adolescents between 13 and 18 years of age. 1.…”

“…It has been used in several studies and was also adapted and standardized for the age groups of 8-12 years and 13-18 years (Kupfer et al 2003) so that aspects of coping with itching can also be recorded in these age groups. It has been used in several studies and was also adapted and standardized for the age groups of 8-12 years and 13-18 years (Kupfer et al 2003) so that aspects of coping with itching can also be recorded in these age groups.…”

Scham und Berührung

“…Nach der Entwicklung und ersten Validierungsstichprobe des Fragebogens (Grolle et al 2003) konnten 5 Skalen "familiäre Berührung", "Selbstberüh-rung", "partnerschaftliche Berührung", "Ekel" und "Scham" erstellt werden.…”