Cross-cultural adaptation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale to the Portuguese language

Abstract

Objectives To perform the cross-cultural adaptation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) to the Portuguese language and estimate its internal consistency in a sample of Brazilian young adults. Methods The cross-cultural adaptation process followed international references based on five stages (translation, synthesis, back-translation, expert assessment, and pretest) to assess idiomatic, semantic, conceptual, and cultural equivalence. The internal consistency was estimated by the ordinal alpha coefficient (α). Results The new Portuguese version is presented in this study with minor changes from the original that did not violate the meaning of the items. This version was tested in 30 adults (women = 56.7%, M age = 26.0 [SD = 6.2] years) who understood the content. The participants completed the scale in an average time of 4.6 (SD = .6) minutes. The internal consistency of the scale was good (α = .95) when applied in a sample of 80 adults (women = 51.2%, M age = 28.0 [SD = 5.7] years). Conclusions The new Portuguese version of the SAAS was equivalent to the original in the idiomatic, semantic, and conceptual area. As the Brazilian participants understood the Portuguese version, cultural equivalence was found. The instrument’s internal consistency was adequate to the sample. The findings of this study may help researchers and clinicians interested in using the SAAS in Brazilian context for tracking characteristic symptoms of social anxiety due to physical appearance. However, before using SAAS in any protocol, it is important to evaluate its psychometric properties, especially the construct validity.

Social Appearance Anxiety Scale: a psychometric investigation and evaluation of the influence of individual characteristics on social appearance anxiety in Brazilian adults who practice physical exercise

“…For reliability, we found adequate values for both genders (α and ω > 0.86), demonstrating that the SAAS one-factor model was able to produce consistent results to assess the latent concept (i.e., social appearance anxiety). These findings corroborate with the original study of the SAAS (Hart et al, 2008), as well as studies conducted in Turkey (Sahin and Topkaya, 2015) and Brazil (Donofre et al, 2021). In the measurement invariance tests, we found ΔCFI values < −0.01, indicating that the SAAS one-factor model was equivalent across independent subsamples evaluated within each gender, suggesting external validity, i.e., even under different conditions the factorial structure was maintained.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that evaluated the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the SAAS one-factor model for men and women Brazilian adults who practice physical exercise. The study that translated and cross-culturally adapted the SAAS into Portuguese verified only its content validity and internal consistency (Donofre et al, 2021). Therefore, our study contributes to providing evidence on construct validity (i.e., factorial, convergent, and concurrent), measurement invariance in independent subsamples, and reliability.…”

“…Response scale ranges from not at all (1) to extremely (5), with higher scores indicating greater social appearance anxiety. Participants completed the Portuguese version of the SAAS (Donofre et al, 2021).…”

“…In addition, studies have shown adequate psychometric properties of this scale, suggesting its good ability to screen signs and symptoms of social appearance anxiety (Claes et al, 2012;Papapanou et al, 2023). Donofre et al (2021) developed a Portuguese version of the SAAS for the Brazilian context, but its psychometric properties have not yet been evaluated. It would be important to attest the validity and reliability of the data obtained with this version, considering that the Brazilian population is largely concerned with body appearance (Santos Silva et al, 2011).…”

Validation of the Greek Version of Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in Adolescents and Young Adults

“…The SAAS in our study have demonstrated good internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha= 0,942, which is consistent with the results of the initial research of Hart et al . (2008) (a1 = 0.94, a2 = 0.95, a3 = 0.94 for the 3 samples) and with validations in other languages ( Reichenberger et al ., 2021 ; Doğan, 2010 ; Goodarzi et al ., 2021 ; Donofre et al ., 2021 ).…”