Assessment of body elimination attitude

Constructed a 26-item Likert format Body Elimination Attitude Scale with good internal consistency and temporal stability (N = 60). Factor analysis yielded seven factors labeled Fecal Smell, Personal Hygiene, Sight, Dirty Hair, Animal Feces, Mucous-like Discharge, and Sound. Both the prominence of items that pertained to defecation and the positive association of the Scale with a measure of obsessive personality-anal character were viewed as consistent with psychoanalytic theory. Correlations with psychometric instruments revealed greater body elimination disgust to be associated with psychopathology. Youth, lesser education, having fewer children, being female, and lesser income also were associated with greater disgust.