The Fear of Pain Questionnaire-III: further reliability and validity with nonclinical samples

The Fear of Pain Questionnaire-III (FPQ-III) is a 30-item self-report measure designed recently to assess fears about pain across three pain dimensions: severe, minor, and medical. We conducted three studies to replicate the factor structure of the FPQ-III and examine several psychometric properties of reliability and validity in nonclinical samples. A principal-axis with oblique rotation analysis provided strong empirical support for the three-factor solution of the FPQ-III (Study 1). In Study 2, results of the confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) confirmed the fit of the three-factor oblique model to an independent sample of data. In addition, we evaluated several measurement models to address issues related to convergent and discriminant validity for the FPQ-III. In Study 3, data from adult samples were analyzed for the adequacy of internal consistency and criterion-related validity of the FPQ-III. The FPQ-III total and scales showed high levels of reliability estimates across the three studies. Limitations and future research with the FPQ-III are discussed.