SOCIAL ANXIETY SCALE FOR CHILDREN - CHAPMAN ISSN 1446-5442 Web site: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/journal/ajedp/ 42 Australian Journal of Educational & Developmental Psychology. Vol 2, 2002, pp 42-48 Brief Report Brief Report Brief Report Brief Report Confirmatory factor analysis of the social anxiety scale for children Elaine Chapman The University of Sydney ABSTRACT A confirmatory factor analysis was performed on responses from 436 (234 female, 202 male) primary school students to the La Greca et al. (1988) Social Anxiety Scale for Children (SASC). While loadings for one SASC item were ambiguous, results generally supported the original two-factor (Fear of Negative Evaluation and Social Anxiety and Distress) scale structure. Internal consistencies for the two subscales were also high. Recommendations for further refinement work on the scale are made. INTRODUCTION Recent research in educational psychology has demonstrated the importance of students’ social relationships in predicting a broad range of schooling outcomes. Several studies have found correlations between students’ perceptions of school psychosocial contexts and levels of task engagement and academic performance (e.g., Voekel, 1996; Fine, 1991; Finn & Rock, 1997). Others have reported positive relationships between the quality of students’ peer relationships and levels of achievement motivation (Wentzel & Asher, 1995), emotional well-being (Parker & Asher, 1993), and school adjustment (Coie et al., 1992). Results such as these have led some researchers to suggest that social goals be incorporated explicitly into major theories of achievement motivation (e.g., Urdan & Maehr, 1995). Although much of the research on students’ peer relationships has focused on cognitive factors such as social problem-solving skills (Ladd, 1999), a number of studies have also demonstrated the importance of affective factors in moderating social interaction outcomes. Social anxiety is generally viewed to be a maladaptive affective response to social situations (e.g., King, 1990). Watson and Friend (1969) operationalized social anxiety as (i) experiences of distress, discomfort, fear, or anxiety in social situations, (ii) deliberate avoidance of social situations, and (iii) fears of receiving negative evaluations from others. Social anxiety has been found to correlate with several indices of child and adolescent adjustment such as depression (Gonzalez, et al., 1996) and feelings of loneliness (Johnson, LaVoie, & Mahoney, 2001). Given the potential significance of social anxiety as a moderator of psychological adjustment and social relationships, there is a clear need for well-validated measures of its presence in children at the primary and secondary school levels. The Social Anxiety Scale for Children (SASC) developed by La Greca et al. (1988) was designed to assess the three anxiety facets outlined by Watson & Friend (1969). Owing to its relative brevity and the simplicity of its wording, the SASC is well suited for use with younger children. In the SASC, students are asked to indicate how often each of 10 statements is true for them (e.g., “I worry about what other kids think of me”) on a three-point scale (never, sometimes, always). In the original study, an exploratory factor analysis of responses from 287 second- to third-grade students suggested the presence of two SASC factors: One relating to a fear of negative evaluation (FNE), and the other relating to social avoidance and distress (SAD). Although this solution accounted for an acceptable percentage of variance in SASC item scores (64.4%), loadings for some items were modest (e.g., 0.34), with one item (“I worry