title: The Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in Italian Adolescent Populations: Construct Validation and Group Discrimination in Community and Clinical Eating Disorders Samples.
abstract: Anxiety in situations where one's overall appearance (including body shape) may be negatively evaluated is hypothesized to play a central role in Eating Disorders (EDs) and in their co-occurrence with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Three studies were conducted among community (N = 1995) and clinical (N = 703) ED samples of 11- to 18-year-old Italian girls and boys to (a) evaluate the psychometric qualities and measurement equivalence/invariance (ME/I) of the Social Appearance Anxiety (SAA) Scale (SAAS) and (b) determine to what extent SAA or other situational domains of social anxiety related to EDs distinguish adolescents with an ED only from those with SAD. Results upheld the one-factor structure and ME/I of the SAAS across samples, gender, age categories, and diagnostic status (i.e., ED participants with and without comorbid SAD). The SAAS demonstrated high internal consistency and 3-week test-retest reliability. The strength of the inter-relationships between SAAS and measures of body image, teasing about appearance, ED symptoms, depression, social anxiety, avoidance, and distress, as well as the ability of SAAS to discriminate community adolescents with high and low levels of ED symptoms and community participants from ED participants provided construct validity evidence. Only SAA strongly differentiated adolescents with any ED from those with comorbid SAD (23.2 %). Latent mean comparisons across all study groups were performed and discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, P.za Botta 11, 27100, Pavia, Italy. antonios.dakanalis@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Antonios
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2328-3862
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dakanalis
authors.affiliation: Division of Psychiatry, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Carrà
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Calogero
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, P.za Botta 11, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: M Assunta
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Zanetti
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Volpato
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Catholic University, Milan, Italy.|Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Riva
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery and Interdisciplinary Medicine, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Clerici
authors.affiliation: Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cipresso
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D057215:Body Dysmorphic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D052018:Bulimia Nervosa / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D015897:Comorbidity; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012649:Self Concept; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Comorbidity; Eating Disorders; Psychometrics; Social Appearance Anxiety Scale; Social anxiety