A New Questionnaire for Estimating the Severity of Visual Height Intolerance and Acrophobia by a Metric Interval Scale
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AIMS: To construct and validate a short scale for the assessment of the severity of visual height intolerance (vHI) and acrophobia. METHODS: = 5,529). Items were applied in a telephone survey of a representative population-based sample. RESULTS: A total of 1,960 persons were included. The life-time prevalence of vHI was 32.7% (f: 36.1%; m: 28.4%); 12% of these persons fulfilled the psychiatric criteria of acrophobia. Rasch analysis of 11 items on severity, symptoms, and triggers resulted in an 8-item scale with good fit to the model. The score differentiated well between persons with and without acrophobia. The distribution of the scores on the metric scale of the questionnaires of those individuals with acrophobia is separate and distinct from that of susceptibles without acrophobia, although there is some overlap. CONCLUSION: Our proposed short questionnaire (vHISS, see Table 1 and Supplementary Material) allows a continuous quantification of the severity of vHI within a metric interval scale from 0 to 13. The diagnosis of acrophobia can be established by including two additional questions.
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The integrated phobia psychometric questionnaires provide an objective progress overview via the Visual Height Intolerance questionnaire and allow reporting emotional impact via EmojiGrid.
“This novel approach empowers users during their gamified therapeutic journey by providing an objective progress overview based on scoring using an auto-administered Visual Height Intolerance psychometric [101] questionnaire while also offering the possibility to report the emotional impact of exposure using the EmojiGrid embedding [102].”
From SAFEvR MentalVeRse.app: Development of a Free Immersive Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Acrophobia and Claustrophobia (2024) · cites this paper as [101]
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“Two participants had to be excluded: One prior to the experiment because they met the criterion for acrophobia determined with the visual Height Intolerance Severity Scale (vHISS; Huppert et al., 2017).”
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- Authors
- Huppert, D., Grill, E., & Brandt, T.
- Affiliations
- Deutsches Schwindel- und Gleichgewichtszentrum (DE)
- Institut für Medizinische Informationsverarbeitung, Biometrie und Epidemiologie (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Huppert, Doreen
- Venue
- Frontiers in Neurology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2017-06-01
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- 211-211
- ISSN
- 1664-2295 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5451500
- OpenAlex
- W2620406867
- Cited by
- 46
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 4.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Neurology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Open access LMU (Ludwid Maxmilian's Universitat Munchen) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (01 EO 0901)
- Gemeinnützige Hertie-Stiftung
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Vestibular and auditory disorders
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation › Balance, Gait, and Falls Prevention
- Keywords
- acrophobia, questionnaire development, disease severity assessment, Rasch analysis, prevalence, diagnostic criteria, phobia
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