EXPLORATION OF THE PSYCHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LIEBOWITZ SOCIAL ANXIETY SCALE IN A SPANISH ADOLESCENT SAMPLE

Social phobia is an excessive concern about scrutiny by other people in situations the person considers embarrassing or humiliating. The purpose of this study is to explore the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the social fear and social avoidance subscales of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) and to analyze the score distribution of both subscales. To this end, we assessed a sample of 1, 012 Spanish adolescents attending school. The results of a first-order factor analysis indicate the existence of a dominant factor in both subscales of the LSAS-as well as three other less relevant factors-and explain most of the variance of the subscales. The internal consistency of the first factor was quite high in both subscales. The LSAS and its two subscales showed adequate theoretical validity with different variables related to social interaction. Finally, the different scores obtained in both subscales make it possible to group adolescents into three clusters with different characteristics. A study of the sociodemographic variables of the components of the clusters showed a significant relation only with sex. Depression and Anxiety 25:977-987, 2008. (C) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.