ORIGINAL PAPER
My Skin – a self-questionnaire for assessment of the emotional-cognitive representation of skin
1
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty in Sopot, SWPS University of Social Sciences
and Humanities, Sopot, Poland
2
Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
3
Department of Dermatology, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Immunodermatology of the Nicolaus Copernicus
University, Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Bydgoszcz, Poland
Submission date: 2015-07-06
Final revision date: 2015-08-26
Acceptance date: 2015-09-30
Online publication date: 2016-02-10
Publication date: 2016-02-19
Health Psychology Report 2016;4(3):272-280
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
quality of life and well beingresearch methodology, measurement, and statistics in health psychology
ABSTRACT
Background
The aims of this paper are: 1) to present the My Skin questionnaire, 2) to report the preliminary results of a study on the emotional-cognitive skin representation, and 3) to encourage dermatologists and other specialists to use the My Skin questionnaire in their research. The inspiration for a new tool measuring the emotional and cognitive representation of skin was the psychological conception of the ‘skin ego’.
Participants and procedure
My Skin, a self-questionnaire (MSQ), was used to measure the emotional and cognitive representation of an individual’s skin. It consists of two main scales: satisfaction with the skin condition (AB) and awareness of the biopsychosocial functions of the skin (C). The Body Esteem Scale, Body Self Questionnaire and Self-Esteem Scale were used to validate the MSQ. The participants were: healthy individuals (n = 343) and dermatology patients (psoriasis, vitiligo, juvenile acne, n = 84).
Results
The psychometric parameters are presented in this article. The internal consistency reliabilities for subscales are in the range of .75 and .95. This article also presents preliminary basic statistics for the skin representation of dermatology patients and healthy people.
Conclusions
My Skin questionnaire is a valid tool for assessing cognitive and emotional representation of skin and may be used in psychodermatology and esthetic dermatology to assess satisfaction with and awareness of skin.
The aims of this paper are: 1) to present the My Skin questionnaire, 2) to report the preliminary results of a study on the emotional-cognitive skin representation, and 3) to encourage dermatologists and other specialists to use the My Skin questionnaire in their research. The inspiration for a new tool measuring the emotional and cognitive representation of skin was the psychological conception of the ‘skin ego’.
Participants and procedure
My Skin, a self-questionnaire (MSQ), was used to measure the emotional and cognitive representation of an individual’s skin. It consists of two main scales: satisfaction with the skin condition (AB) and awareness of the biopsychosocial functions of the skin (C). The Body Esteem Scale, Body Self Questionnaire and Self-Esteem Scale were used to validate the MSQ. The participants were: healthy individuals (n = 343) and dermatology patients (psoriasis, vitiligo, juvenile acne, n = 84).
Results
The psychometric parameters are presented in this article. The internal consistency reliabilities for subscales are in the range of .75 and .95. This article also presents preliminary basic statistics for the skin representation of dermatology patients and healthy people.
Conclusions
My Skin questionnaire is a valid tool for assessing cognitive and emotional representation of skin and may be used in psychodermatology and esthetic dermatology to assess satisfaction with and awareness of skin.
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Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
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