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Updated: Jun 13, 2026

The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
Dimensional structure of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale according to the analysis of data obtained with a
Judith Eidecker1, Angelika Glöckner-Rist, Alexander L Gerlach
1WWU Münster, Germany.
Abstract:
The Social Interaction and Anxiety Scale (SIAS) is widely used to assess social interaction anxiety. Yet its dimensional structure is still not well-defined. Especially, the conceptual pertinence of three negatively keyed items has been challenged. In this study, dimensionality of the answers of a student sample to a German SIAS version was first analyzed exploratorily. Subsequently, we tested confirmatorily several measurement models specifying different SIAS dimensions, and investigated how these relate to extraversion. The most reasonable model was cross-validated relying on data from healthy controls and social phobia sufferers. All analyses involved methods suited for an adequate handling of ordinal data. The findings confirm that three negatively keyed items are dubious indicators of social interaction anxiety. Thus, only the remaining 17 items should be used for this purpose in future studies. Analyses of their psychometric properties show, in addition, that they apparently tap three different facets of social interaction anxiety.
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