Development and validation of Social Anxiety Scale (SAS)

Although several scales have been developed to measure social anxiety, none of these scales have focused on measuring social anxiety in the college setting. This study aimed to develop a scale to measure social anxiety that can be used specifically for college students. The scale was developed based on previously published scales of social anxiety (social phobia disorder). A total of 127 psychology undergraduate students (92 females and 35 males), aged between 18 and 51 years (M= 22.05; SD = 3.91), participated in this work. To validate our scale, we conducted concurrent validity analysis by correlating the proposed social anxiety scale (SAS) with established scales. The participants answered questions related to five measures, including a demographic and pro-social questionnaire, SAS, Extraversion Scale, Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale, and Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire. We hypothesized that social anxiety would be (1) negatively correlated with extraversion, (2) positively correlated with intolerance of uncertainty, (3) negatively correlated with student adaptation to college, and (4) positively correlated with pro-social behavior (PB). This study found that all of the hypotheses could be confirmed, except that for PB. Our SAS was further found to possess excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .86), and discriminant analysis of the related items yielded satisfactory results. Our findings suggest that the new scale is a reliable and valid tool for measuring social anxiety among college students