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Objective: The Social Phobia Scale (SPS ) was designed to measure social phobia defined as "anxiety and fear at the prospect of being observed or watched by other people, and in particular, where the individual expresses distress when undertaking certain activities in the presence of others" (1). TheSocial Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) was designed to measure social interaction anxiety defined as "distress when meeting and talking with other people"' (1). Thus the two companion measures were designed to distinguish between scrutiny fears and concerns about interaction. The scales correspond to the DSM-III-R descriptions of Social Phobia--Circumscribed and Generalised types, respectively. In this study, the reliability and validity of the Turkish translation of the Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) in male alcohol dependent inpatients were determined.
Method: The study was conducted with hospitalized patients between August 2008 and March 2009 in the Bakirkoy State Hospital for Mental Health and Neurological Disorders, AMATEM (Alcohol and Drug Research, Treatment and Education Center) in Istanbul. Participants were 155 consecutively admitted male alcohol dependents. Diagnoses of alcohol dependence and social anxiety disorder were made with the SCID-I modules of these disorders. Patients were investigated with the SPS, the SIAS (2), the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation II (BFNE-II) and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS).
Results: The Turkish versions of both the SPS and the SIAS were found to be compatible with the original scales. In alcohol dependents, the internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) was 0.92 for the SPS and 0.93 for the SIAS. For each of the items, the corrected item-total correlation values were between 0.21 and 0.68 (p<0.001) for the SPS and were between 0.48 and 0.80 (p<0.001) for the SIAS. Test–retest correlations were between 0.19 and 0.72 for items and 0.79 for the total score for the SPS and were between 0.26 and 0.73 for items and 0.85 for the total score for the SIAS. The SPS and SIAS scores were correlated with each other and with two measures of social anxiety, the BFNE-II and LSAS, providing evidence of convergent validity. According to the ROC analysis a cut-off point of 24 was appropriate for the SPS and 30 was appropriate for the SIAS.
Conclusions: The Turkish versions of these scales were found to be compatible with the original ones among male alcohol dependent inpatients. The results suggest that each scale had an adequate reliability in terms of internal consistency. The corrected item-total correlation coefficient values were significant at moderate to high degrees and were stable over two weeks of testing. Also the finding that the SPS and SIAS correlated with related constructs such as the BFNE-II and LSAS showed concurrent validity. The Turkish versions of the SPS and SIAS have been proven to be acceptable, reliable and valid measures of social phobia in male alcohol dependent inpatients.
References:
1. Mattick RP, Clarke JC. Development and validation of measures of social phobia scrutiny fear and social interaction anxiety. Behav Res Ther 1998;36:455–470.
2. Heimberg RG, Mueller GP, Holt CS, Hope DA, Liebowitz MR. Assessment of anxiety in social interaction and being observed by others: the social interaction anxiety scale and the social phobia scale. Behav Ther 1992;23:53–75. Bulletin of Clinical Psychopharmacology 2011;21(Suppl. 2):S173-4