Background: The Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adults (SAQ-A30) is a newly developed instrument for measuring social anxiety. This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the SAQ-A30 in Iran.
Methods: The English version of the SAQ-A30 was translated into Persian using forward-backward procedure. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of university students. In addition they completed two other standard questionnaires namely the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation-Straightforward version (BFNE-S) and the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN). Validity was assessed using discriminant analysis, and explanatory factor analysis. In addition the correlation between SAQ-A30, the BFNE-S, and the SPIN was assessed to examine convergent validity. Finally the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to examine internal consistency.
Results: In all 299 students took part in the study. The mean age of participants was 23.6 (SD = 4.2) years. The analysis showed that the SAQ-A30 discriminated well between men and women where women significantly scored higher than male respondents as expected (P = 0.003). The exploratory factor analysis revealed a five-factor structure for the questionnaire that jointly explained 53.3% of variance observed. The results from convergent validity showed significant correlation between the SAQ-A30, the SPIN (r = 0.66, P < 0.001), and the BFNE-S (r = 0.5, P < 0.01). The internal consistency (to assess reliability) was satisfactory (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.92).
Conclusion: The preliminary findings from this study indicated that the Persian version of SAQ-A30 is a valid instrument for measuring social anxiety in Iran. However, further psychometric evaluation of the questionnaire is recommended.
Keywords: Anxiety; Iran; Psychometric; Social anxiety; Social phobia.