Title

Measurement invariance of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory

Authors

Authors

B. E. Bunnell; D. L. Joseph;D. C. Beidel

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Anxiety Disord.

Keywords

Social phobia; Anxiety; Measurement equivalence; Invariance; ITEM RESPONSE THEORY; PSYCHIATRIC-DISORDERS; CONCURRENT VALIDITY; GENERAL-POPULATION; GENDER-DIFFERENCES; COMMUNITY SAMPLE; YOUNG-ADULTS; FIT INDEXES; PREVALENCE; COMORBIDITY; Psychology, Clinical; Psychiatry

Abstract

The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) is a commonly used self-report measure asocial phobia that has demonstrated adequate reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity. However, research has yet to address whether this measure functions equivalently in (a) individuals with and without a diagnosis of social phobia and (b) males and females. Evaluating measurement equivalence/invariance is necessary in order to determine that the construct of social anxiety is interpreted similarly across these populations. The results of the current investigation, using a series of nested factorial models proposed by Vandenberg and Lance (2000), provide evidence for strong equivalence across 420 individuals with and without diagnoses of social phobia and across male and female samples. Accordingly, these results provide psychometric justification for comparison of SPAI scores across the symptom continuum and sexes. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Volume

27

Issue/Number

1

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

84

Last Page

91

WOS Identifier

WOS:000315430700010

ISSN

0887-6185

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