Psychometric evaluation of the Social Interaction Phobia Scale

Abstract

The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of a novel measure of social anxiety symptoms, the Social Interaction Phobia Scale (SIPS), as a stand-alone item set, using an undergraduate sample (N=512). The 14-item SIPS has three subscales assessing Social Interaction Anxiety, Fear of Overt Evaluation, and Fear of Attracting Attention. Confirmatory factor analyses replicated the three-factor structure for the SIPS originally reported by Carleton et al. All SIPS scores demonstrated good internal consistency. The convergent validity of the SIPS was supported by strong and positive correlations between all SIPS scores and measures of social anxiety and fear of evaluation; the finding that the relationships between all SIPS scores and a social anxiety measure were stronger than relationships between all SIPS scores and measures of other constructs supported the discriminant validity of the SIPS. Results suggest that the SIPS possesses excellent psychometric properties.

Keywords:

• anxiety
• social anxiety disorder
• social phobia
• psychometric characteristics
• social interaction anxiety
• fear of public scrutiny

Notes

1. Subscale scores from the IUS-12 were not directly applicable to our hypotheses, and so, were not included in the computation of internal consistency.

2. It is worth noting that all of our obtained results, which included the transformed SIPS Fear of Attracting Attention subscale, were substantively identical to results of the untransformed scores. These results are not presented to preserve space but are available upon request.