Measurement invariance of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale-Self-Report
Duccio Baroni1,2,3, Laura Caccico3, Serena Ciandri3
1Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Objective:
The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale-Self Report (LSAS-SR) is a self-report measure of social anxiety (SA), which has shown adequate psychometric properties across cultures. However, no study has systematically evaluated its measurement invariance (MI) between (a) individuals with and without a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (SAD) and (b) males and females. The current study addresses this issue.
Methods:
We collected data on 257 (158 females) Italian individuals diagnosed with SAD and 356 (232 females) community-dwelling adults.
Results:
We initially found support for the unidimensionality of the Italian LSAS-SR measurement model in all samples. Using the Graded Response Model, we obtained evidence of partial MI and differential item functioning between community-dwelling and SAD-diagnosed individuals and evidence of strong MI between male and female participants.
Conclusions:
The results of this study suggest that the Italian LSAS-SR measures the same trait in the same way across the symptom continuum and sexes, making it a psychometrically sound tool for assessment, screening, and research purposes.
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