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Background: The Saving Inventory-Revised (SI-R) is the most widely used self-report measure of hoarding symptom severity. The goal of this study is to establish a firm empirical basis for a cutoff score on the SIR and to examine the functioning of the SIR as a screening tool and indicator of hoarding symptom severity across the lifespan. Methods: This study used archival data from 1,116 participants diagnosed with a clinical interview in 14 studies conducted by research groups who focus on hoarding. We used receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and the Youden's Jstatistic to determine optimal cutoff scores for classifying participants who would be likely to receive a hoarding diagnosis. Results: Overall, the discriminant performance of the SIR Total score and each of the three subscales was high, confirming the status of the SIR is an excellent screening tool for differentiating hoarding from non-hoarding cases. The optimal SIR Total cutoff score is 39, although analyses suggested that older adults require a significantly lower cutoff and adults younger than 40 years require a significantly higher cutoff score. Limitations: The confidence interval around the optimal cutoff for the SIR Total score for oldest age group was wide in comparison to those reported for the younger groups, creating more uncertainty around the optimal cutoff score for this group. Conclusions: This paper provides investigators and clinicians with the data necessary to select evidence-based cutoff scores on the SIR that optimally suit their relative need for sensitivity and specificity in different age groups.

Most studies examining cultural differences in social anxiety have found that East Asian participants report higher social anxiety than do Western Europeans, but the differences have not always been statistically significant. Effect sizes have ranged widely, and methodological differences among studies make comparisons difficult. To obtain an estimate of the overall magnitude of cultural group differences in self-reported social anxiety, we conducted a meta-analysis of previous studies comparing individuals of Asian and European heritage. We also tested whether available culturally relevant variables would explain (moderate) some of the between-study differences in cultural differences in social anxiety. The analysis included 31 studies involving 57 individual comparisons between Asian and European samples on measures of social anxiety, resulting in a weighted mean effect size of d = 0.47, 95% confidence interval [0.39, 0.54]. Effect sizes were somewhat higher in studies involving Asian-heritage participants living in Asian countries (d = 0.52) than in Western countries (d = 0.39), although the confidence intervals did overlap slightly (p = .06). Future research on the mechanisms of this difference should include more nuanced measures of acculturation as well as an exploration of anxiety-evoking contexts for these cultural groups.

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