Development of a Litigaphobia Scale: Measurement of Excessive Fear of Litigation

Abstract

The present investigation was directed toward the development of a psychometrically sound instrument that would permit measurement and understanding of the phenomenon of litigaphobia. An initial item pool of 143 items was subjected to a Thurstone analysis. 47 items survived this screening for low ambiguity and uniform spread of tearfulness. These 47 items were administered to 123 physicians and psychologists in a six-point Likert format. The Kuder-Richardson-20 split-half analysis was .90. Next a series of factor analyses were performed. A main factor was identified as generalized litigaphobia and a second factor was labelled invulnerability to litigation. A Guttman scaling procedure for Factor I yielded a four-item scale with a reproducibility coefficient of .92.