Psychometric Evaluation of the Social Phobia Inventory and the Mini-Social Phobia Inventory in a Swedish University Student Sample

Social anxiety is common in the general population, as well as among students in higher education. For screening of social anxiety, there is a need for brief scales. In the present study, the psychometric properties were examined in a Swedish version of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) and the Mini-Social Phobia Inventory (Mini-SPIN) in a university student sample (n = 161). In addition to the SPIN and Mini-SPIN, participants completed measures of fear of public speaking, general anxiety, depression, and quality of life. Exploratory factor analyses were used to investigate the underlying dimensions of the SPIN, and reliability, convergent, and divergent validity of SPIN and Mini-SPIN were examined by Cronbach's alpha and correlation analyses. It was found that a shorter eight-item version of the SPIN was associated with two solid factors (fear and avoidance of social interaction and fear and avoidance of criticism), and acceptable internal consistency, convergent, and divergent validity. In addition, the Mini-SPIN was associated with satisfactory convergent validity, but the reliability was not acceptable. It is concluded that the SPIN-8 is a viable screening tool for social anxiety in a university student population.