FMPS questions: 35 items, response options, and subscales

What are the FMPS response choices?

Each statement uses the same five-point agreement format. Higher values indicate stronger agreement with the statement as written.

• Open the FMPS questionnaire on LuriaLab

How do the 35 items divide across the subscales?

The subscales have different numbers of items, which affects their possible score ranges. This is the single most common source of confusion when people compare their own subscales.

• Comparing subscales with different item counts

Should I answer about this week or in general?

The FMPS asks about how you are in general. It does not name a recall period. This makes it different from every other questionnaire covered on this site: the GAD-7 asks about two weeks, the PSS-10 about a month, the K10 about four weeks, and the BAI about the last week.

Answer for how you usually approach standards and mistakes, not only for the worst day of an exam week. If a difficult week is strongly colouring your answers, note that alongside the result rather than trying to correct for it while answering.

One practical consequence: a general questionnaire is not designed to track week-by-week change. Retaking it after every assessment will mostly show noise.

Are any FMPS items reverse-scored?

On the standard form the items are worded so that agreement indicates more of the dimension being measured, and the published scoring simply sums the responses within each subscale. This is unlike the PSS-10, which does reverse four items.

Even so, check the scoring key that comes with the version you use. Adaptations and translations vary, and carrying the reverse-scoring rule from another questionnaire across to this one produces a wrong result.

• PSS-10 reverse-scored items, for contrast

Which version of the FMPS am I taking?

Several perfectionism questionnaires share similar names, and mixing up their scoring keys produces meaningless numbers. Check the name and item count before comparing any result with a published range.

• FMPS: the 35-item Frost scale described in these explainers.
• HMPS: the Hewitt and Flett Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, a different scale with different dimensions and a confusingly similar name.
• Short forms of the FMPS: various researchers have proposed reduced item sets, which have their own ranges.
• FMPS-Brief: an 8-item short version with its own published psychometric work.
• Child and adolescent perfectionism measures: separate instruments, not the FMPS with easier wording.

• Cox, Enns and Clara (2002): structure in distressed and student samples
• Psychometric properties of the FMPS-Brief

Can I skip a question?

A subscale score needs all of its items. An unanswered item is not a zero, and on this scale zero is not even an available response: the lowest value is 1. Leaving items blank and adding up what remains produces a total that cannot be compared with anything.

The parental items are the ones people most often want to skip. If they do not apply to your situation or you would rather not answer them, it is reasonable to leave the whole parental portion aside and use only the other subscales, as long as you record that you did so.

• Suitability and different family circumstances

What should I record with my result?

Because the FMPS has no single headline number, a bare figure is especially hard to interpret later. Keep enough context to make the result usable in a conversation.

• The date you completed it.
• The version, item count, and language.
• All six subscale scores, not only the highest one.
• Whether you answered the parental items.
• The specific working pattern you want help with.