Validation of the German version of the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire

The "Fear of Spiders Questionnaire" (FSQ) of Szymanski and O'Donohue (1995) was translated into German because a well validated tool to screen for spider phobia has been missing. The resulting "Spinnen-Angst-Fragebogen" (SAF) shows an internal consistency of r = .94 and a test-retest reliability of r = .75. The factors avoidance/help seeking" and "fear of harm" (accounted variance 58.9 % and 8.6 %) were extracted, which are most similar to the English version. As expected, high correlations were found with the "Spider-Phobia-Questionnaire" (SPQ). Significant correlations appeared with the "Beck Anxiety Inventory" (BAI) and no correlations with the "Beck Depression Inventory" (BDI). Altogether the Spinnen-Angst-Fragebogen seems to be a economic and reliable instrument to assess the anxiety with spiders at the selfrating.