The Driving Cognitions Questionnaire: Development and preliminary psychometric properties Anke Ehlers a, * , Joanne E. Taylor b , Thomas Ehring a,1 , Stefan G. Hofmann c , Frank P. Deane d , Walton T. Roth e,f , John V. Podd b a Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, UK b School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand c Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA d Department of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Australia e Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, USA f Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA Received 15 March 2006; received in revised form 5 July 2006; accepted 1 August 2006 Abstract Recent research has suggested that fear of driving is common in the general population. People may have various concerns when driving, and instruments for the assessment of these concerns are lacking. The present paper describes the development and preliminary evaluation of the Driving Cognitions Questionnaire (DCQ). The DCQ is a 20-item scale that measures three areas of driving-related concerns—panic-related, accident- related, and social concerns. In three separate samples from different countries (n = 69, 100, and 78), the scale showed good internal consistency and substantial correlations with measures of the severity of driving fear. It discriminated well between people with and without driving phobia. It also showed convergent validity with other measures. The questionnaire shows promise for use in research and clinical practice. # 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Driving phobia; Cognition; Panic disorder; Social phobia; Posttraumatic stress disorder; Travel phobia Fear of driving is common in the general population (Ehlers, Hofmann, Herda, & Roth, 1994; Mathew, Weinman, Semchuk, & Levin, 1982; Munjack, 1984; Taylor, 2002; Taylor & Deane, 2000; Taylor, Deane, & Podd, 2000). In clinical settings, fear of driving may either present as the Journal of Anxiety Disorders 21 (2007) 493–509 * Correspondence to: Department of Psychology P077, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. Tel.: +44 20 7848 5033; fax: +44 20 7848 0763. E-mail address: a.ehlers@iop.kcl.ac.uk (A. Ehlers). 1 Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany. 0887-6185/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.08.002