The reliability, validity and utility of the SAD and FNE scales for anxiety disorder patients

Abstract

The Social-Evaluative Anxiety Scale (SEAS) has been used extensively in social anxiety and recently in social phobia research, yet its psychometric properties in anxiety disordered patients is still unknown. In fact to date no study has examined the psychometric properties of the SEAS for a clinical population. This paper therefore investigates the psychometric properties of the SEAS using 265 anxiety disorder patients. Factor analysis shows that a clear two-factor solution can be derived from the SEAS and this accounts for 39.4% of the variance. The two factors correspond to the two original SEAS subscales: (1) social avoidance and distress (SAD) and (2) fear of negative evaluation (FNE). Cronbach's α for both subscales was found to be 0.94 indicating high internal homogeneity. In addition, analysis of variance shows that the SAD can discriminate social phobics from simple phobics and panic disorder patients but not from panic disorder with agoraphobia or generalized anxiety disorder patients. Similarly the FNE can discriminate social phobics from simple phobics but not from panic disorder, panic disorder with agoraphobia or generalized anxiety disorder patients. These results suggest that the SEAS has sound psychometric properties and thus good clinical utility for an anxiety disorder population.