Fear of Intimacy with Helping Professionals Scale: Reliability and Validity of English and Mandarin Versions

Abstract

In this study the authors examine the reliability and validity of the Fear of Intimacy with Helping Professionals Scale (FIS–HP) with Chinese (N = 150) and American (N = 145) elderly persons. Factor analysis using principal component analysis with a varimax rotation was used to examine the FIS–HP factor structure for both samples. A three factor solution emerged for both samples. The FIS–HP has acceptable internal consistency reliability with both the United States and China samples. Correlation analysis supported five of the six hypotheses related to convergent validity. English and Mandarin versions of the scale are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Fear of intimacy
• helping professionals
• reliability
• validity
• exploratory factor analysis
• China