AI Article Synopsis
- Previous research has found that social anxiety rates differ between African American and European American populations, with possible variations in how psychological tests measure this.
- The current study involved 1,276 undergraduates from these two ethnic groups completing specific scales for social anxiety and found that the measures do not function the same way across these populations.
- The results indicate that social anxiety scales may need adjustments for different ethnic backgrounds, stressing the importance of further research on the validity of these measures in diverse groups.
Article Abstract
Previous research has established that social anxiety occurs at different rates in African American and European American populations (Grant et al., 2005), while psychometric investigations of widely used measures of psychopathology show differences in factor structure based on ethnic background (Carter, Miller, Sbrocco, Suchday, & Lewis, 1999; Chapman, Williams, Mast, & Woodruff-Borden, 2009). The current study examined response characteristics of 1276 African American and European American undergraduates completing the Fear of Negative Evaluation and Social Avoidance and Distress Scales (Watson & Friend, 1969). Confirmatory factor analyses failed to demonstrate factorial invariance in the two ethnic samples, and Wald tests suggested several items on both measures be dropped for African Americans. Results suggest the FNE and SAD operate differently across ethnic groups. Implications for the cross-cultural measurement of social anxiety and the importance of continued rigorous psychometric inquiry of commonly used measures are discussed.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.04.011 | DOI Listing |
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