Social anxiety disorder prevention in adolescence. Psychometric properties of the Adolescents’ Interpretation and Belief Questionnaire (AIBQ)
Yura Loscalzo, Marco Giannini
In this study, we analysed the psychometric properties of the Adolescents’ Interpretation and Belief Questionnaire (AIBQ). We aimed to introduce a screening instrument for the risk of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) in adolescents in Italy, in order to promote preventive interventions. The sample consisted of 329 adolescents aged between 13 and 19 years; 25 of them had a SAD diagnosis. We analysed the construct validity of the instrument, the reliability, the convergent validity and its sensitivity and specificity. The results showed that the AIBQ has some psychometric limits, but an optimal discriminative capacity for the Social Negative Interpretation scale, whose best cut-off is a score of 3.50.
Keywords
interpretation bias; negative interpretations; social anxiety; social anxiety disorders; adolescents.
