Psychometric Properties of the Survey of Personal Beliefs: A Rational-Emotive Measure of Irrational Thinking

A test of internal consistency and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on the Survey of Personal Beliefs, a new measure of irrational thinking based on rational-emotive personality theory. The survey, which was logically derived, includes a general rationality factor and subscales measuring five hypothesized core categories of irrational beliefs. Subjects included a nonclinical sample of 130 men and 150 women, with a mean age of 46. Results indicated that the Survey of Personal Beliefs had satisfactory total and scale reliability. The confirmatory analyses supported a higher order factor model including 5 first-order factors (awfulizing, self-directed shoulds, other-directed shoulds, low-frustration tolerance, and self-worth) and 1 second-order or general factor.