Assessing shyness in Chinese older adults

The Shyness Scale (SS) is a brief instrument for assessing shyness as a personality trait. The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the SS were investigated in a random sample of 192 Macau Chinese older adults. The Chinese version of the SS possesses high internal consistency and exhibited satisfactory short-term test-retest reliability. The Chinese version of the SS exhibited acceptable convergent validity with other negative measures of psychological well-being including negative emotional states (assessed by the Negative Affect Scale), loneliness (assessed by the UCLA Loneliness Scale), and state anxiety and trait anxiety (assessed by STAI). The divergent validity of the Chinese version of the SS was demonstrated by the negative but significant association between the SS and self esteem (assessed by Rosenberg Self Esteem Inventory).