Assessing Social Anxiety in Chile: Validation of the Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adults (SAQ)

Assessment of social anxiety (SA) in Spain, Portugal and Latin America is usually done through non-empirically developed questionnaires in Anglo-Saxon countries, something that presents significant difficulties. In order to have a measure adapted to the situations and characteristics of the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, the "Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adults" (SAQ) was developed, selecting their items in base to social situations generated in these countries. This paper presents the internal structure of the SAQ with a general Chilean sample (n=1052) and assesses the differences in SA related to sex. Factor analysis revealed a pentafactorial structure with adequate fit and reliability indexes. Some differences associated with sex, with women scoring higher than men in some SA dimensions were also found. These results support the usefulness of the SAQ for assessing social anxiety in Chile.