title: Does the social concerns component of the anxiety sensitivity index belong to the domain of anxiety sensitivity or the domain of negative evaluation sensitivity?
abstract: The present study utilized an exploratory factor-analytic approach (i.e. principal-components analysis; PCA) to investigate whether the Social Concerns component of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI [Peterson, R. A., & Reiss, S. (1992). Anxiety Sensitivity Index manual (2nd ed.). Worthington, OH: International Diagnostic Systems.]) is best conceptualized as belonging to the domain of anxiety sensitivity (AS) and/or the domain of negative evaluation sensitivity (NES). A sample of university students (N = 216) was administered measures of both NES (i.e. Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation scale; Leary, 1983) and AS (i.e. ASI). Participants' responses to the items comprising these measures were subjected to a PCA with oblique rotation. Factors representing the NES construct and the three lower-order AS constructs (i.e. AS Physical, Psychological and Social Concerns) were obtained. Subscales derived from these four factors were positively and significantly correlated with one another and loaded on a single higher-order factor labeled Threat Sensitivity. Thus, the present findings suggest that the AS Social Concerns factor is distinct from NES and the other lower-order components of AS. However, correlational analyses and higher-order PCA indicated that the AS Social Concerns factor taps a blend of AS and NES as well as something unique and distinct from both global AS and NES.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: McWilliams
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Stewart
authors.forename: P S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: MacPherson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D012925:Social Conformity; D013334:Students