Optimal Cut-Off Score of Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory-Brief Form

Abstract

Abstract. No cut-off scores for the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory-Brief (SPAI-B) are available to screen for young adults with and without social anxiety disorder (SAD). In addition, there is a currently heated debate on the utility of the performance-only specifier in DSM-5. The present study is aimed at covering these gaps. Participants included 124 young adults in higher education with a clinical diagnosis of SAD and 81 healthy controls. The SPAI-B scores revealed a continuum of severity among the nonclinical population, performance-only specifier participants, and those with both performance and social interactional fears. Data suggested to use a rounded cut-off of 24 to screen for patients with both performance and interactional fears, and a rounded cut-off score of 23 for young adults with performance-only specifier. Findings demonstrated that the SPAI-B is particularly useful as a screening measure among young adults in higher education, but the limited discriminative capacity of the performance-only specifier may call into question the clinical utility of this recently established specifier.

Validación del Inventario de Fobia y Ansiedad Social- Forma Breve para universitarios argentinos

“…No obstante, la factibilidad de aplicar este tipo de métodos de muestreo es reducida cuando se trabaja con este tipo de poblaciones por lo que se procuró incluir universidades públicas y privadas, diferentes disciplinas y alumnos de diversos niveles de cursado. Sumado a lo expuesto, es imprescindible ampliar los estudios de manera de poder obtener más evidencias de validez, por ejemplo, análisis de detección de cambios ante una intervención, estudios de invarianza estructural según género y comparación de poblaciones clínicas y sanas para el establecimiento de puntos de corte, tal como se ha realizado con muestras españolas (García-López, Beidel, Muela-Martínez & Espinosa-Fernández, 2016).…”