Overview
The Youth Intolerance of Uncertainty – Parent-Report (YIU-PR; Wong & Caporino, 2023) is a 26-item questionnaire designed to assess intolerance of uncertainty (IU) in children and adolescents aged 6–17 years, based on parent or primary caregiver report. Items describe behaviours and emotional responses to uncertain or unpredictable situations, and parents rate the extent to which each statement characterises their child using a Likert-type response scale (e.g., from “not at all characteristic” to “very characteristic”). Exploratory factor analysis in the original validation study supported a four-factor structure—Difficulty Tolerating Waiting Periods, Doubting and Reassurance Seeking, Overestimation of Negative Events, and Physical and Behavioural Responses. Item scores are summed or averaged to derive subscale scores and a total IU score, with higher scores reflecting greater intolerance of uncertainty. Completion time is approximately 10 minutes. The YIU-PR was developed alongside a child/adolescent self-report version, the Youth Intolerance of Uncertainty – Self-Report (YIU-SR), which includes parallel items phrased for completion by young people themselves. At the time of publication, no clinician-report version or official translated/long-form adaptations of the YIU-PR had been published. Related measures in the broader youth IU literature include the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for Children (IUS-C; Comer et al., 2009)—available in both child self-report and parent-report forms—and the RULES Questionnaire for younger children (Sanchez et al., 2017), which assesses behavioural rigidity and responses to low structure, constructs conceptually linked to IU.Scoring & Interpretation
The YIU-PR total score is obtained by either summing all item scores, or averaging scores across the 26 items (depending on the researcher’s preference or software setup). The original validation paper reports results based on summed totals and subscale totals. The measure contains four subscales, each scored by summing (or averaging) their items: Difficulty tolerating waiting periods; doubting and reassurance seeking; overestimation of negative events; physical and behavioral responses.Psychometric Properties
Internal Consistency
According to the original validation study (Wong & Caporino, 2023), the Youth Intolerance of Uncertainty – Parent-Report (YIU-PR) demonstrated excellent internal consistency. For the total scale, Cronbach’s α = .96. Difficulty Tolerating Waiting Periods: α = .90. Doubting and Reassurance Seeking: α = .90. Overestimation of Negative Events: α = .92. Physical and Behavioral Responses: α = .87.
Test-Retest Reliability
Not available in the original validation study
Factor Structure
Validity
Construct Validity not defined
Structural Validity
Wong & Caporino (2023) report that they conducted an EFA on the 26 YIU-PR items, arriving at a 4-factor solution, labelled: Difficulty Tolerating Waiting Periods; Doubting and Reassurance Seeking; Overestimation of Negative Events; Physical and Behavioral Responses.
Convergent / concurrent validity
YIU-PR total and subscale scores were significantly associated with parent-reported symptoms of separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (i.e., higher YIU-PR → higher symptom levels). In the clinical subsample some anxiety domains (GAD, social anxiety) remained predicted by YIU-PR scores.
Divergent validity has not been reported.
Measurement Invariance
No studies reporting measurement invariance analysis of the measure have been reported.