Reliability, Validity, and Confirmatory Factor Structure of Persian Version of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS)

Since social anxiety is one of prevalent psychological disorders, presence of appropriate instruments for assessing this disorder is necessary. The aim of this study was the investigation of reliability, validity, and confirmatory factor structure of Persian version of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale.
Persian version of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, after double translation and accordance with Iranian culture, was exerted on 453 student of Kharazmi university of Tehran, which have been selected through cluster sampling. Internal consistency and item rest correlations method was used for reliability testing, and confirmatory factor analysis, subscale correlations, and criterion validity were utilized for investigation of validity.
Chronbach’s alpha coefficients range (0.82 to 0.95) implies that Persian version of Liebowitz scale is internally consistent. Results of confirmatory factor analysis supported four factor structure (interaction anxiety and avoidance, and observation anxiety and avoidance) of scale. There were moderate significant correlations of Persian version of LSAS and Beck depression inventory, these might stem from comorbidity of these disorders. In addition, the correlation coefficients between subscales were high (0.70 to 0.96).
Persian version of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale has good psychometric characteristics and can be used in different fields.