Abstract

These studies considered the nature of cognitive avoidance, a maintaining factor in worry and generalized anxiety disorder (Borkovec, Ray, & Stöber, 1998; Dugas, Gagnon, Ladouceur, & Freeston, 1998). First, the psychometric properties of the English translation of Gosselin et al.'s (2002) Cognitive Avoidance Questionnaire (CAQ) were examined. The CAQ assesses five cognitive avoidance strategies: Thought Substitution, the Transformation of Images into Thoughts, Distraction, Avoidance of Threatening Stimuli, and Thought Suppression. The CAQ was administered to 456 students at Concordia University in Montreal. The CAQ total scale and subscales demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency and good test-retest reliability. A confirmatory factor analysis supported the five-subscale structure, though the model's goodness-of-fit was lower than expected. Finally, the CAQ showed convergent validity with measures of worry, thought suppression, information-avoidant coping in controllable situations, and information-seeking coping in uncontrollable situations. The CAQ also demonstrated divergent validity, showing negative correlations with information-seeking in controllable situations. Subsequently, Study 2 examined whether two worry-related processes, negative beliefs about worry and the fear of anxiety, may be contributing to cognitive avoidance in worry. A total of 259 students participated in this study. In hierarchical multiple regression analyses, negative beliefs about worry and the fear of somatic symptoms of anxiety, rather than the fear of losing control over anxiety, were found to predict cognitive avoidance. All process measures were significantly correlated with worry. Negative beliefs about intrusive thoughts, the fear of the anxiety symptoms, and cognitive avoidance showed stronger relationships with catastrophic worry than with generalized worry.