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DIMENSIONS OF FRUSTRATION
INTOLERANCE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP
TO SELF-CONTROL PROBLEMS
Neil Harrington
University of Edinburgh and Stratheden Hospital, UK
This paper is based on research submitted to the University of Edinburgh in part fulfillment of a
Doctorate of Philosophy degree.
Address correspondence to Neil Harrington, Psychology Department, Stratheden Hospital, Cupar,
Fife, KY15 5RR, UK; e-mail: neil@nharr.freeserve.co.uk.
METHOD
Measures
(although I feel I’m in a rut); (7) I use recreational drugs for relief;
(8) I comfort eat; (9) I restrict my eating by vomiting or laxatives;
(10) I overspend on unnecessary things; (11) I rely on medication to
obtain symptom relief. Individuals were asked to rate each item in
terms of how well it described their method of coping with ‘‘distress,
discomfort, or frustration.’’ Items were scored on a 4-point Likert
scale ranging from 0 (‘‘not at all’’) to 3 (‘‘very much so’’). Whilst it
would have been preferable to use an existing coping measure, these
suffer from considerable methodological and psychometric problems
(De Ridder, 1997), and tend to focus on functional rather than
dysfunctional behavior.
Self-harm and alcohol use showed skewed distributions and non-
parametric tests were used for these items. The vomiting/purging
and drug use items had severe frequency problems, with less than
10% of individuals endorsing scale points 2 or 3. Therefore, these two
items were dropped from subsequent analysis. Internal reliability of
the remaining nine items was relatively low, with an alpha coeffi-
cient of .68. Since this might indicate multidimensionality, a Princi-
pal Components analysis using varimax rotation was conducted. A
scree plot indicated two factors accounting for 42% of the variance.
The first factor was composed of cognitive and behavioral avoidance,
procrastination, routine, and medication use. The second factor in-
cluded self-harm, alcohol, and overspending. Comfort eating loaded
on both factors. However, corrected item-total correlations for each
sub-scale remained low, with mean inter-item correlations of .24
(factor I) and .20 (factor II).
There was evidence that factor I reflected emotional distress and
avoidance. This showed a moderate correlation with HAD total score
(.45), whilst factor II had a weaker relationship (.26). On the other
hand, factor II appeared to reflect problems with frustration, and was
correlated with anger (.29), with factor I showing a nonsignificant
relationship (.09). Both factors were significantly correlated (.43 and
.47, p < .001, respectively) with the Schema Questionnaire impaired
limits sub-scales (Young, 1994). All the Coping Inventory items had
significant correlations with the two Schema sub-scales, which assess
problems with making commitments, setting goals, and tolerating
unpleasant emotions.
In summary, there was some evidence for the validity of the
Coping Inventory items. However, given the small number of items
in each factor, and relatively low intercorrelations, it was decided it
Neil Harrington 9
Table 1
RESULTS
Analysis of Self-Harm
Model Specification
Model Comparison
Fit statistics for each of the models are shown in Table 2. All path
coefficients were significant in model A. However, with a significant
v2 and an unacceptable discrepancy ratio and RMSEA score model A
was clearly an unacceptable fit to the data. Model B was also an
inadequate fit to the data. In this model, the path coefficient from
self-esteem to self-harm was significant (b = ).29, p < .001), but not
Neil Harrington 13
Table 2
DISCUSSION
.19
.30
.55***
.14*
Entitlement Anger
.60*** .29
.38***
.13*
Emotional Anxiety
Intolerance
-.15*
Self-harm
-.25***
-.43***
Self-esteem -.30***
.21***
-.11
Age
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