The Development of Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for University Students

Background: Intolerance of uncertainty is a dispositional characteristic, which arises from negative beliefs about uncertainty and shows negative reactionary inclination to uncertain situations. Objective: To develop an indigenous valid and reliable scale in order to explore intolerance of uncertainty among the university students in cultural context of Pakistan. Method: A cross sectional study design was applied and it was conducted in public as well as private sector universities situated in Lahore city. The data was collected from November, 2020 to January 2021. A standardized three step model was used to develop a reliable scale to measure Intolerance of Uncertainty in university students. The interviews were conducted with 10 university students and initially 108 items were generated. The dubious items were eliminated and a list of 56 items was generated. Moreover, a panel comprising experts had reviewed these items for validating empirically and finalized 41 items were given to a group of 14 undergraduate students as pilot project. Hence, IUSS scale with an annotated performa acquiring the age, gender, class, parental educational status etc was provided to 310 students (44.80% male and 55.20% female) through a stratified sampling technique. Result: A four (04) factor structure of Intolerance of Uncertainty scale was finalized through Exploratory Factor Analysis and the factors were named as apprehension (9 items), lack of Decisiveness (9 items), lack of Stability (11 items) and lack of Acceptance (7 items). Results showed that the indigenously developed self-report measure has good internal consistency (Chronbach’s Alpha=.81), test re-test reliability r= .88 (P <.001), concurrent validity r= .63 (P <.001). Results also showed that 55.2% of participants have mild, 28.4% have moderate and 15.8% have severe level of intolerance of uncertainty. Conclusion: An indigenous measuring tool containing 36 items with self-reporting features for ascertaining Intolerance of uncertainty in students enrolled in ...