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Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health
Published in: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health 1/2015

Open Access 01-12-2015 | Research article

Two dimensions of social anxiety disorder: a pilot study of the Questionnaire for Social Anxiety and Social Competence Deficits for Adolescents

Authors: Carolin Fernandez Castelao, Katharina Naber, Stefanie Altstädt, Birgit Kröner-Herwig, Uwe Ruhl

Published in: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health | Issue 1/2015

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Abstract

Background

The Questionnaire for Social Anxiety and Social Competence Deficits for Adolescents (SASKO-J) was developed as an instrument for clinical diagnostics of social anxiety disorder in youths by measuring social anxiety and social deficits in two separate dimensions. The study provides an initial assessment of the scale’s psychometric properties in a clinical sample.

Method

The reliability and validity of the SASKO-J were assessed in a mixed clinical sample of 12- to 19-year-old German adolescents (N = 85; mean age 15.71 years; SD = 1.92; 62.4 % girls). In a second step, the diagnostic validity was evaluated in a clinical sample of 31 adolescent patients with social anxiety disorder (mean age 16.10 years; SD = 1.54; 74.2 % girls) and a sample of 115 German high school students (mean age 15.84 years; SD = 1.65; 60.9 % girls) via Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis.

Results

The internal consistencies of the total scale and the subscales were good to excellent (0.80 ≤ α ≤ 0.96), and the results indicated a good convergent and divergent validity. The ROC analysis revealed a satisfying area under curve (AUC = 0.866), and a cutoff of 41.5 for the SASKO-J total score represented the best balance of sensitivity (0.806) and specificity (0.826).

Conclusions

The results of this pilot study provide initial support for the clinical use of the SASKO-J in the diagnostic process. Future research should address the question of psychometric properties in a social anxiety disorder sample as well as the questionnaire’s sensitivity for detecting change in symptoms during therapy.
Footnotes
1
Since it was very difficult to recruit adolescents with social anxiety disorder, the corresponding sample was rather small. To obtain meaningful results, a mixed clinical sample was therefore used for analyses of reliability and validity.
 
2
In Germany, students attend grammar school from fifth to twelfth grade and finish with qualifications for university admission or matriculation. Students who attend a secondary general school do so from fifth to tenth grade and finish with the General Certificate of Secondary Education, which qualifies them for further education or job training. Graduation from a secondary modern school (grade 5 to grade 9) results in the Certificate of Secondary Education that allows for job training. A comprehensive school combines these types of schooling.
 
3
The results of reliability and validity refer to the mixed clinical sample (N = 85). For the computation of mean differences and the examination of sensitivity and specificity, the social anxiety disorder sample (N = 31) and the student sample (N = 115) were used.
 
4
Since the focus of the present paper was on the reliability and validity of the SASKO-J in a clinical sample, the results concerning the factor structure and the item characteristics are not presented here but can be requested from the corresponding author.
 
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Metadata
Title
Two dimensions of social anxiety disorder: a pilot study of the Questionnaire for Social Anxiety and Social Competence Deficits for Adolescents
Authors
Carolin Fernandez Castelao
Katharina Naber
Stefanie Altstädt
Birgit Kröner-Herwig
Uwe Ruhl
Publication date
01-12-2015
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health / Issue 1/2015
Electronic ISSN: 1753-2000
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-015-0079-y

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