Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS)
(Mattick & Clarke, 1998 ).
Variable
Social interaction anxiety refers to distress experienced when meeting and talking to people, specifically dis-
tress that concerns ‘fears of being inarticulate, boring, sounding stupid, not knowing what to say or how to
respond within social interactions, and being ignored’ ( Mattick & Clarke, 1998 , p. 457). We have included a
measure of social anxiety in this chapter because levels of social anxiety reflect the degree to which people
are motivated to make impressions on others but doubt that they will make the impressions that they desire
(Leary & Jongman-Sereno, in press; Leary & Kowalski, 1995 ). Other viable and widely-used measures of social
anxiety are reviewed in Leary (1991) .
Sample
Scale development involved college students who were enrolled in psychology courses ( n5482), an unselected
sample of community members ( n5315), and three clinical samples who were diagnosed with social phobia
(n5243), agoraphobia ( n513), and simple phobias ( n516) (Mattick & Clarke, 1998 ).
Description
A large pool of items was reduced to 38 items that assess social anxiety. Based on item-total correlations and
efforts to minimize the semantic overlap across items, 19 items were retained for the final SIAS. Respondents
indicate the degree to which each statement is characteristic or true of them on a 5-point Likert-type response
scale ranging from 0 ( not at all )t o4( extremely ). Five samples of participants /C0two unselected samples ( ns5482
and 315) and three clinical samples ( ns5243 diagnosed with social phobia, 13 diagnosed with agoraphobia, 16
diagnosed with simple phobias) completed the items.
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Cronbach’s alpha coefficient exceeded 0.88 for all of the five initial samples ( Mattick & Clarke, 1998 ). Inter-
item reliability exceeds 0.85 ( Heimberg, Mueller, Holt, Hope, & Liebowitz, 1992 ).
Test/C0Retest
Four-week and 12-week test-retest reliability were both found to be 0.92 ( Mattick & Clarke, 1998 ).
Validity
Convergent/Concurrent
In the initial validation sample, scores correlated 0.74 with the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, 0.66 with
the social phobia subscale of the Fear Questionnaire, and 0.66 with the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale. Scores
on the SIAS also correlated with scores on the Interaction Anxiousness Scale ( rs50.82 in an undergraduate sam-
ple and 0.88 in a community sample) and the Audience Anxiousness Scale ( rs50.62 in an undergraduate sample
and 0.68 in a community sample).
In addition, scores correlated positively with responses on the Social Interaction Self-statement Test, which
assesses the frequency of positive and negative self-statements that pertain to interactions with people of the
other sex ( r50.69 with negative self-statements). They also correlated with self-reported state anxiety during a
social interaction ( Gore, Carter, & Parker, 2002 ). SIAS scores were significantly higher for people diagnosed with
social phobia than with the unselected samples and people diagnosed with agoraphobia.
Divergent/Discriminant
The SIAS possesses discriminant validity with respect to the ability to distinguish the tendency to experience
social anxiety from other sources of anxiety ( Brown et al., 1997 ). In addition, scores correlated with responses on
the Social Interaction Self-statement Test ( r520.56 with positive self-statements).
Construct/Factor Analytic
A factor analysis conducted on responses from 243 social phobic patients revealed a single factor on which all
items loaded greater than 0.30 ( Mattick & Clarke, 1998 ).457 OVERVIEW OF THE MEASURES
IV. INTERPERSONAL STYLES