The specification of a construct of social anxiety, the subsequent development of two scales, and validational studies are reported. The two scales are the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale (FNE) and the Social Avoidance and Distress scale (SAD). The scales had very high indexes of homogeneity and possessed sufficient reliability. Three experiments and other correlational data are presented. People high in SAD tended to avoid social interactions, preferred to work alone, reported that they talked less, were more worried and less confident about social relationships, but were more likely to appear for appointments. Those high in FNE tended to become nervous in evaluative situations, and worked hard either to avoid disapproval or gain approval. Certain convergent and discriminant relationships had been part of the construct of social anxiety, and the correlational data supported these differentiations.

Introduction The Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) is a commonly used instrument in the evaluation of fibromyalgia (FM) patients. Over the last 18 years, since the publication of the original FIQ, several deficiencies have become apparent and the cumbersome scoring algorithm has been a barrier to widespread clinical use. The aim of this paper is to describe and validate a revised version of the FIQ: the FIQR.

The present study focused on the mechanism through which social and problematic support affects psychological adjustment in chronic illness. The authors hypothesized that self-esteem would mediate the relations between social and problematic support and adjustment. Eighty-six end-stage renal disease patients were assessed twice for social support problematic support, and self-esteem. Adjustment was assessed twice by depression and optimism. Mediational analyses indicated that social support operated through self-esteem to influence optimism cross-sectionally and prospectively and depression cross-sectionally. Social support was associated with high self-esteem, which in turn increased optimism and was related to decreased depression. Problematic support was unrelated to self-esteem obviating mediational analysis. Disaggregating social support into subscales showed that belonging support predicted decreases in depression, and both tangible and belonging support predicted increases in optimism.

No abstract