Psychometric properties of the social interaction anxiety scale and the social phobia scale in Hungarian adults and adolescents

Abstract

Background Although social anxiety disorder is one of the most frequent disorders, it often remained unrecognized. Utilizing brief, yet reliable screening tools, such as the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS-6) and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS-6) are helping to solve this problem in parts of Western Europe and the US. Still some countries, like Hungary, lag behind. For this purpose, previous studies call for further evidence on the applicability of the scales in various populations and cultures, as well as the elaborative validity of the short forms. Here, we aimed to provide a thorough analysis of the scales in five studies. We employed item response theory (IRT) to explore the psychometric properties of the SIAS-6 and the SPS-6 in Hungarian adults (n = 3213, age range:19–80) and adolescents (n = 292, age range:14–18). Results In both samples, IRT analyses demonstrated that the items of SIAS-6 and SPS-6 had high discriminative power and cover a wide range of the latent trait. Using various subsamples, we showed that (1) the scales had excellent convergent and divergent validity in relation to domains of anxiety, depression, and cognitive emotion regulation in both samples. Further, that (2) the scales discriminated those with a history of fainting or avoidance from those without such history. Lastly, (3) the questionnaires can discriminate people diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (n = 30, age range:13–71) and controls. Conclusions These findings suggest that the questionnaires are suitable for screening for SAD in adults and adolescents. Although the confirmation of the two-factor structure may be indicative of the validity of the “performance only” specifier of SAD in DSM-V, the high correlation between the factors and the similar patter of convergent validity might indicate that it is not a discrete entity but rather a part of SAD; and that SAD is latently continuous.

Phobia-specific patterns of cognitive emotion regulation strategies

“…One of the strengths of our study is that instead of focusing only on one phobia subtype, we assessed the three most common ones. Our results are in line with previous studies 27,28,[31][32][33][34][35][36] examining different subtypes showing that the pattern of associated ER strategies differs by phobia subtype. These results might have direct implications for clinical practice insofar as treatments should focus on (1) increasing adaptive ERs that are most useful in decreasing fear in that particular subtype (reappraisal in social anxiety, refocusing in BII phobia, and reappraisal, refocusing, and planning in animal phobia), and ( 2 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ on learning to use these in situations where people encounter the object of their fears is a novel implication of our study.…”

“…Previous studies seemingly agree with a general ER deficit in social anxiety and BII fears. Social anxiety has been associated with all four maladaptive strategies [33][34][35] , all part of the irrational automatic thoughts appearing in patients with social anxiety disorder in social settings 56 . In a study 28 , BII (but not spider phobia) was linked to general emotion dysregulation.…”

Measuring social phobia symptoms in a community sample of adolescents: An examination of the psychometric properties of the SPAI-23

“… Mörtberg and Jansson Fröjmark (2019) run a study using the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) in a young adult sample, and reported two factors; fear and avoidance of social interaction and fear and avoidance of criticism. A two-factor model was also reported by Ouyang et al (2020) , who examined the factor structure of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Social Phobia Scale (SPS) in a young adult sample, similar to Zsido et al (2021) who tested the same scales in adults and adolescents. Panayiotou et al (2017) administered the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) ( Turner et al, 1989 ) to a sample of young adults to evaluate its psychometric properties and then compared it, using CFA, with several models of previous studies and a preliminary EFA.…”

“…Yet, considering a dimensional approach that places individuals along a continuum depending on the severity of the symptoms, such as the RDoC ( Insel et al, 2010 ), our results should be considered representative of adolescents in the “normal” side of that continuum. There are additional studies assessing the dimensionality of SAD and approach it as non-categorical ( Crome et al, 2010 ; Ruscio, 2010 ; Fuentes-Rodriguez et al, 2018 ; Zsido et al, 2021 ), which poses important implications for future research, assessment and intervention design.…”

Measurement Invariance of Two Different Short Forms of Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Social Phobia Scale (SPS) in Chinese and US Samples

“…Both the Fergus and Peters short-forms have demonstrated adequate psychometric properties (Carleton et al, 2014;Fergus et al, 2014), and have been translated into Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, and Hungarian (Fergus et al, 2014;Ramos & Cerqueira-Santos, 2021;Wong et al, 2018;Zsido et al, 2021). However, evidence for cross-national measurement invariance of these two short forms has been rarely reported.…”