Cross-cultural adaptation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale to the Portuguese language

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objectives To perform the cross-cultural adaptation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) to the Portuguese language and estimate its internal consistency in a sample of Brazilian young adults. Methods The cross-cultural adaptation process followed international references based on five stages (translation, synthesis, back-translation, expert assessment, and pretest) to assess idiomatic, semantic, conceptual, and cultural equivalence. The internal consistency was estimated by the ordinal alpha coefficient (α). Results The new Portuguese version is presented in this study with minor changes from the original that did not violate the meaning of the items. This version was tested in 30 adults (women = 56.7%, M age = 26.0 [SD = 6.2] years) who understood the content. The participants completed the scale in an average time of 4.6 (SD = .6) minutes. The internal consistency of the scale was good (α = .95) when applied in a sample of 80 adults (women = 51.2%, M age = 28.0 [SD = 5.7] years). Conclusions The new Portuguese version of the SAAS was equivalent to the original in the idiomatic, semantic, and conceptual area. As the Brazilian participants understood the Portuguese version, cultural equivalence was found. The instrument’s internal consistency was adequate to the sample. The findings of this study may help researchers and clinicians interested in using the SAAS in Brazilian context for tracking characteristic symptoms of social anxiety due to physical appearance. However, before using SAAS in any protocol, it is important to evaluate its psychometric properties, especially the construct validity.