title: Validation of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C) in a sample of Brazilian children.
abstract: The purpose of the present study was to examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C), an instrument developed in the United States and applied to a sample of Brazilian schoolchildren. The process included the translation of the original material from English into Portuguese by two bilingual psychiatrists and a back translation by a bilingual physician. Both the front and back translations were revised by a bilingual child psychiatrist. The study was performed using a cross-sectional design and the Portuguese version of the SPAI-C was applied to a sample of 1954 children enrolled in 3rd to 8th grade attending 2 private and 11 public schools. Eighty-one subjects were excluded due to an incomplete questionnaire and 2 children refused to participate. The final sample consisted of 1871 children, 938 girls (50.1%) and 933 boys (49.8%), ranging in age from 9 to 14 years. The majority of the students were Caucasian (89.0%) and the remainder were African-Brazilian (11.0%). The Pearson product-moment correlation showed that the two-week test-retest reliability coefficient was r = 0.780 and Cronbach's alpha was 0.946. The factor structure was almost similar to that reported in previous studies. The results regarding the internal consistency, the test-retest reliability and the factor structure were similar to the findings obtained in studies performed on English speaking children. The present study showed that the Portuguese language version of SPAI-C is a reliable and valid measure of social anxiety for Brazilian children.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psiquiatria, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. ggauer@terra.com.br
authors.forename: G J C
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Gauer
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Picon
authors.forename: S J L
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Vasconcellos
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: D C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Beidel
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D001938:Brazil; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014175:Translating