Evidence Base - TQ data collection and analysis
Emetophobia-free is an evidence-based self-help programme for sufferers of emetophobia
Every teenage and adult participant in the programme completes a 'TQ Quiz' both at the beginning and the end of their course - which is usually 6-8 weeks in duration. Our purpose-built TQ (Thrive Quotient) Quiz forms the backbone of our programme as it clearly identifies for the participant the areas of their cognition, beliefs, feelings and behaviours that are driving their phobia and their inability to thrive.
As they work their way through the programme and start to feel more powerful, their scores on the quiz will start to change and the participant will see exactly how they are changing. At the end of the programme they will be able to identify how much they have changed in every area of their life.
The TQ gathers lots of dynamic data - 375 pieces to be exact - each time a person completes it, which means that we have just under 10 million bits of data, on the 13000 or so people who have taken the online emetophobia TQ Quiz!*
The TQ Quiz looks like this:
The Quiz seeks to find out several different variables - all of which contribute to the cause and maintenance of emetophobia - including:
- How often you get depressed (if at all)
- How often you get anxious (if at all)
- How powerful you feel in specific situations in your life
- How powerful you feel in key areas of your life
- How internal or external your Locus of Control is
- How high/low your self-esteem is
- How high/low your social confidence is
- How strong/weak your Desire for Control is
- How good your control skills are compared to your coping skills
- How high your social anxiety is in relation to emetophobia
- How often you suffer fearful thoughts about emetophobia
- How often you have avoidant thoughts about emetophobia
- How often you exhibit one of more of the following 'unhelpful thinking styles': Brooding, Perfectionist, Black and White, Paranoid, Catastrophic, Hypervigilant, Helpless, Impulsive and Negative
Once you've completed the quiz you'll be emailed a detailed report containing all your responses, and what they mean in relation to emetophobia.
The first part of the report discusses how powerful you feel generally and gives you an overall score, like this:
We then look at what percentage of your powerful feelings (your sense of agency and self-efficacy) stem from your 'control skills' and your 'coping skills':
After that, we separate the powerful feelings into different areas:
After which we measure and compare your Social Confidence in relation to emetophobia, how often you experience fearful thoughts about vomit, and how often you experience avoidant thoughts about vomit:
Then we calculate your scores for the 'unhelpful thinking styles:
And then finally we list all the questions and statements from within the quiz, give your answer, and explain the scoring:
All of the before and after quizzes are then studied, compared and analysed, and we then do several things with the data. including:
- Reach out to participants who we think could use some extra support
- Assess success levels for all participants
- Discuss how we can improve elements of the programme
- Run boffin-level tests against our data to see how it stacks up against other similar surveys
We have the before and after data for the last 13000 emetophobes who went through our programme (since the quizzes have been online) and it's very clear and obvious to see how successfully they have overcome their phobia, or, where they are on their journey to overcoming their phobia.
As well as the data we collect from the TQ Quiz, we also gather valuable information from the many other mini-quizzes and questionnaires we use throughout the programme.
Add to this data the feedback we get when a 'Thrive Programme Coach ®' supports an emetophobe through the programme, and the feedback we get from over 80% of the programme participants - including all the video testimonials they send in - and you can appreciate how much evidence we have about the success of the programme in helping people to overcome their emetophobia.