Introduction

The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI; Turner, Beidel, Dancu, & Stanley, 1989) is a widely used measure of social anxiety and has the potential to assess a wide range of social fears. Previous factor analytic findings suggest the presence of 4-5 factors describing anxiety symptoms. Taking a different approach to scoring than previous studies, this investigation proposes and supports a new model, which, in addition to these symptom dimensions, is able to capture the different situations (strangers, authority figures, members of the opposite sex and people in general) that are of concern to the examinee. Answers by situation are typically ignored in the scoring of the measure since situation-items are averaged by item content.

Objectives

To examine the factor structure of the Greek adaptation of the SPAI by comparing alternative factor specifications and provide convergent and discriminant validity evidence for the subfactors. A novel model to account for a secondary source of variance in responses, i.e. situations, is also examined.

Methodology

Confirmatory factor analysis of alternative models of the 32 multi-item questions (i.e. items averaged by content, ignoring the situation) and multi-trait multi-method (MTMM) analysis of all 109 individual items were conducted using self-report data from 568 adults from Cyprus.

Results

Model comparison supported a 4-factor specification of social phobia: focus of attention, social interaction, avoidance and escape, cognitive/somatic symptoms. The novel MTMM model showed good fit implying that utilization of all single items of the SPAI can capture a wider range of social fears and concerns than using the average of the items (multi-items), as is typically done according to the manual.

Conclusions

Using the SPAI in this manner is consistent with the new DSM-5 description of Social Anxiety Disorder, which acknowledges that those with this condition suffer from a wide range of different social fears.