Testing Measurement Equivalence/Invariance of the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents: A Comparison between Sex and Age Groups

Abstract The main purpose of this study was to examine the metric equivalence the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SASA, Puklek, 1997) across gender and age in a sample of adolescents. 500 adolescents for 12 to 18 years old (276 female and 224 male) completed the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the factorial invariance of SASA across sex and age groups. The results of single-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the two-factor model of SASA consisted of apprehension and fear of negative evaluation and tension and inhibition in social contact in across sex and age groups good fit to the data. The results of multigroup confirmatory factor analysis indicated cross-group invariance of form, factor loadings, and factor variances and covariances of the SASA across sex and age groups. These findings emphasizing the psychometric equivalence of SASA indicate that factorial validity of SASA is same across sex and age groups. Therefore, these findings indicate that sex and age groups are qualitatively same in dimensional model of expression of cognitive and behavioral forms of social anxiety.