A measurement invariance investigation of the differences in shyness between adolescents and adults

Abstract

This study addresses the question of whether adolescents or adults are more shy. On the one hand, adolescents spend most of their days functioning as part of a social group (school class), which fosters socialisation processes. However, on the other, in the face of new experiences, shyness may intensify as a result of the development of maladaptive reactions or excessive adjustment to social conventions.Two studies were conducted on different age samples: 314 adults aged 18–35 and 247 high school students, aged 16. In order to verify the hypotheses, the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS) was administered.As a result of confirmatory factor analyses, it has been demonstrated that: (1) the structure of shyness among adults and adolescents, as measured by the RCBS scale, could be either interpreted as unifactorial or three-factorial; and (2) there is partial scalar measurement invariance for both the unifactorial and the three-factor models. The comparison of the average latent mean scores suggests that adults are more shy than adolescents, regardless whether the total score or specific factors were compared.