A study of the Psychometric Characteristics of Fear of Intimacy Scale (FIS) ‎

The purpose of the present research was to examine the factor structure of Fear of Intimacy Scale (Descutner & Thelen, 1991) and to get an acute tool which measures the degree of the Fear of Intimacy among the Iranian people. Population of the study included some married couples living in Tehran, Iran. A sample of 567 subjects, 329 females (58%) and 238 males (41.9%), completed the relevant questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to analyze the structure of the questionnaire. Factor analysis revealed two factors existed among the 35 items of the questionnaire: fear of intimacy in the relationship with the spouse, fear of intimacy in the relationship with the others. The internal consistency for the whole scale, factor 1 and factor 2 was 0.83, 0.81, 0.72 respectively; test-retest reliability for the whole scale, factor 1 and factor 2 was 0.92, 0.87,0.85 respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the data hadsignificant correlation. Negative correlation(-0.58) between this scale and the intimacy scale of walker and Thompson was indicative of the construct validity of test. FIS can be used to help those having problems in increasing the level of intimacy with others especially their spouse. Further, this scale can be used in clinical works and research.