RELIABILITY AND FACTOR STRUCTURE OF BUDNERS TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY SCALE

Budner's (1962) tolerance for ambiguity scale is a well-known and wide ly used measure of ambiguity tolerance. Its reliability and factor str ucture Were examined in the present study. Four hundred thirty-six und ergraduate students completed Budner's scale as part of a student asse ssment center program. The results of Two confirmatory factor analyses failed to substantiate the plausibility of Budner's proposed single-f actor model of tolerance for ambiguity or the four-factor model report ed in Furnham (1994). In addition, the Budner scale was shown to have low internal reliability (alpha = .44) in this sample. The low reliabi lity estimates for this measure, coupled with the apparent lack of a r eplicable factor structure, suggest that the Budner scale (at least in its present form) is a poor measure of tolerance for ambiguity.