Evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Social Phobia Inventory in university students.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to study the psychometric properties of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) in its version for the context of Brazilian adults.

METHODS: A sample of Brazilian university students from the general population (n = 2314) and a sample of university students identified as cases (n = 88) and noncases (n = 90) of social phobia were assessed, using as a parameter the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. The different instruments were applied individually in the presence of a rater.

RESULTS: The SPIN showed adequate internal consistency (.63-.90) and concurrent validity with different instruments of auto- and hetero-evaluation of social phobia. Discriminative validity showed 0.84 to 0.86 sensitivity and 0.84 to 0.87 specificity for cutoff notes between 19 and 21. Factorial analysis showed the presence of a variable number of factors as a function of the different samples.

CONCLUSIONS: The version of the SPIN studied is quite adequate for use in the context of Brazilian university students, favoring the screening of social phobia. However, further studies using more diverse samples are needed.