Short Disgust Scale-Revised: Using Item Response Theory to develop a brief measure of pathogen disgust

The objective of this study was to abbreviate the Disgust Scale Revised in a Peruvian sample. To do this, a previously collected sample of 339 participants was used. The data was analyzed using the Item Response Theory to explore the discrimination, difficulty, and information curve of the items. After selecting the items, the structural validity, reliability, and external validity of the short scales were evaluated and compared with the original scales. The results gave three items for core disgust, three for animal reminder and three for contamination. These dimensions had adequate structural validity, reliability and correlation with external variables. It is concluded that the short 9 item DS-R made in this study has good psychometric properties and is suitable for use in research when it is difficult to use the 25-item version.