Wegner and Zanakos (1994) developed this 15-item self-report measure to assess people’s dispositional tendency to suppress thoughts. Subsequent studies indicated that the WBSI does not capture only one factor, but at least one other construct called “intrusions” (e.g., Blumberg, 2000; Höping and de Jong-Meyer, 2003; Rassin, 2003; Luciano et al., 2006; Schmidt et al., 2009), which indirectly refers to difficulties in the control over unwanted thoughts. The “intrusions” factor showed moderate correlations with measures of anxiety and depression, whereas the “thought suppression” factor was not associated with these psychopathological indicators. For this reason, Höping and de Jong-Meyer (2003)highlighted the need of differentiating between the perceived ability to suppress and the tendency to suppress, when trying to establish a link between thought control and psychopathology. This controversial debate on the structure of the WBSI triggered the development of two other self-reports: the Thought Suppression Inventory (TSI; Rassin, 2003) and the Thought Control Ability Questionnaire (TCAQ; Luciano et al., 2005). Both attempted to overcome the WBSI dimensional shortcomings by computing separate scores for three different constructs (TSI; intrusions, suppression attempts, and successful suppression) or by generating an item set that entirely focused on the assessment of perceived ability to control unwanted thoughts (TCAQ).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01446/full
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