Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia.
School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
J Affect Disord. 2019 Jan 15;243:165-174. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2018.09.028. Epub 2018 Sep 12.
Cultural factors influence both the expression of social anxiety and the interpretation and functioning of social anxiety measures. This study aimed to test the measurement equivalence of two commonly used social anxiety measures across two sociocultural contexts using individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) from Australia and Japan.
Scores on the straightforwardly-worded Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (S-SIAS) and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS) from two archival datasets of individual with SAD, one from Australia (n = 201) and one from Japan (n = 295), were analysed for measurement equivalence using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) framework.
The best-fitting factor models for the S-SIAS and SPS were not found to be measurement equivalent across the Australian and Japanese samples. Instead, only a subset of items was invariant. When this subset of invariant items was used to compare social anxiety symptoms across the Australian and Japanese samples, Japanese participants reported lower levels of fear of attracting attention, and similar levels of fear of overt evaluation, and social interaction anxiety, relative to Australian participants.
We only analysed the measurement equivalence of two social anxiety measures using a specific operationalisation of culture. Future studies will need to examine the measurement equivalence of other measures of social anxiety across other operationalisations of culture.
When comparing social anxiety symptoms across Australian and Japanese cultures, only scores from measurement equivalent items of social anxiety measures should be used. Our study highlights the importance of culturally-informed assessment in SAD.
文化因素不仅影响社交焦虑的表现，还影响社交焦虑测量工具的解释和功能。本研究旨在使用来自澳大利亚和日本的社交焦虑障碍（SAD）患者，测试两种常用社交焦虑测量工具在两种社会文化背景下的测量等效性。
使用来自澳大利亚（n=201）和日本（n=295）两个 SAD 患者档案数据集的直截了当的社交互动焦虑量表（S-SIAS）和社交恐惧症量表（SPS）的评分，采用多群组验证性因素分析（CFA）框架分析测量等效性。
在澳大利亚和日本样本中，S-SIAS 和 SPS 的最佳拟合因子模型并未发现具有测量等效性。相反，只有一部分项目是不变的。当使用这个不变项目的子集来比较澳大利亚和日本样本中的社交焦虑症状时，与澳大利亚参与者相比，日本参与者报告了较低的害怕吸引注意力、类似的公开评价恐惧和社交互动焦虑水平。
我们仅使用特定的文化操作化来分析两种社交焦虑测量工具的测量等效性。未来的研究将需要检验其他社交焦虑测量工具在其他文化操作化下的测量等效性。
在比较澳大利亚和日本文化中的社交焦虑症状时，仅应使用社交焦虑测量工具中具有测量等效性的项目的分数。我们的研究强调了在 SAD 中进行文化知情评估的重要性。
