Focus Area: Social anxiety

Overview: The Severity Measure for Social Anxiety Disorder assesses the severity of symptoms of social anxiety (social phobia) as specified in the DSM-5. Items on this measure correspond to DSM-5 criteria of social anxiety disorder.

Total number of items: Ten

Standardized cadence: Weekly

Estimated completion time: One to three minutes

Supported subscales: None

Age range: 18+

Scoring and interpretation: The total score can range from 0 to 40, with higher scores indicating greater severity of social anxiety disorder (social phobia). This measure does not identify a cutoff score.

Reliability/Validity: Cronbach’s alpha was found to be 0.86. Convergent validity was demonstrated as total scores on this measure were positively and significantly correlated with interviewer-rated social anxiety disorder scores (r = 0.5, p < 0.01).

Additional information: This measure is particularly useful for tracking progress during exposure-based therapies for social anxiety disorder. Consistently high scores on a domain may indicate significant and problematic areas for the individual that might warrant further assessment, treatment, and follow-up.