Citation

La Greca AM, Inglés CJ, Lai BS, Marzo JC. Assessment 2014; 22(2): 224-232.

Affiliation

Miguel Hernandez University of Elche, Alicante, Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1073191114540749

PMID

25059683

Abstract

Social anxiety is a common psychological disorder that often emerges during adolescence and is associated with significant impairment. Efforts to prevent social anxiety disorder require sound assessment measures for identifying anxious youth, especially those from minority backgrounds. We examined the factorial invariance and latent mean differences of the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) across gender and age groups in Hispanic American adolescents (N = 1,191; 56% girls; 15-18 years) using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses.

RESULTS indicated that the factorial configuration of the correlated three-factor model of the SAS-A was invariant across gender and age. Analyses of latent mean differences revealed that boys exhibited higher structured means than girls on the Social Avoidance and Distress-General (SAD-General) subscale. On all SAS-A subscales, Fear of Negative Evaluation, Social Avoidance and Distress-New, and SAD-General, estimates of the structured means decreased with adolescent age. Implications for further research and clinical practice are discussed.

Language: en