Cross-cultural validation of the Brief Social Phobia Scale for use in Portuguese and the development of a structured interview guide.
OBJECTIVE
To present the translation and validation of the Brief Social Phobia Scale for use in Brazilian Portuguese, to develop a structured interview guide in order to systemize its use and to perform a preliminary study of inter-rater reliability.


METHODS
The instrument was translated and adapted to Portuguese by specialists in anxiety disorders and rating scales. A structured interview guide was created with the aim of covering all of the items of the instrument and grouping them into six categories. Specialists in mental health evaluated the guide. These professionals also watched the videotaped interviews of patients with and without social anxiety disorders, and, based on the interview guide, they rated the scale to evaluate its reliability.


RESULTS
No semantic or linguistic adjustments were needed. For the complete scale, the general evaluation showed a percentage of agreement of 0.84 and intraclass coefficient of 0.91. The mean inter-rater correlation was 0.84.


CONCLUSIONS
The Portuguese-language version of the Brief Social Phobia Scale is available for use in the Brazilian population, with rather acceptable indicators of inter-rater reliability. The interview guide was useful in providing these values. Further studies are needed in order to improve the reliability and to study other psychometric properties of the instrument.
Osório
Flávia de Lima
Fde L
Department of Neurology, Psychiatry and Medical Psycology, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. dos Bandeirantes 3900, Campus Universitário, 14048-900 Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. flaliosorio@ig.com.br
Crippa
José Alexandre de Souza
JA
Loureiro
Sonia Regina
SR
D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological / Q000592:standards; D010698:Phobic Disorders; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000592:standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D014177:Translations