Reconstruction, Validation, Reliability Estimation and Normalization of the Women's Fear of Intimacy Scale

Keeping a balance between separateness and togetherness is the key to healthy family intimacy. Thus, intimacy and fear of intimacy are important concepts that highly impact on interpersonal relationships. The overall purpose of this study is reconstruction, validation, reliability estimation and normalization of the women’s fear of intimacy scale. The research method is survey and the population includes all Tehrani women from among whom a sample of 150 subjects was selected through the convenience sampling technique and were asked to answer the fear of intimacy questionnaire. To assess the factor structure of the questionnaire, exploratory factor analysis was performed.The findings indicate that the scale consists of four factors: tendency to intimacy, fear of intimacy, fear of other's views and the extent of relationship quality. The reliability of this scale was worked out on the basis of Cronbach's alpha (0.71) and test-retest correlation (0.77). Then, using z and t scores to normalize the scale, interpretation of every individual’s raw score with respect to his/her profile portrayed in this research was made possible. The results of the present study suggest that the fear of intimacy scale is a valid and reliable instrument for the measurement of fear of intimacy among women.