Temporal Stability of Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory Items

This study was designed to investigate the stability of responses to items on the long and short forms of the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI) (Conroy, 2001), a dispositional measure of fear of failure and cognitive-motivational-relational appraisals associated with the fear of failure. Female college students and male college students (N = 356) enrolled in physical activity classes completed the PFAI four times in a 3-week interval. In general, responses to PFAI items exhibited a level of stability that would be expected based on the previous investigations of dispositional measures of anxiety in physical activity settings (all proportion of agreement ±1 > .70 for all items at all time periods). Two potentially problematic items were identified and proposals were offered for improving these items. These results contribute to the accumulating evidence supporting the validity and reliability of PFAI scores; researchers are encouraged to consider the PFAI for research on fear of failure.