| There have been recent efforts to examine social behavior in sports and mass exercise settings from a self-presentational perspective. Social physique anxiety (SPA) is an index of physique-related self-presentational concern outside of the exercise settings, which may be applicable to such examinations. A primary focus of recent SPA research has been on the psychometric properties in the Hart's original Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS). A need has emerged for further examination of the SPAS to clarify its factorial measurement properties. The purpose of this research was to construct and develop a revised Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS) applicable to persons of Chinese backgrounds. Through the antecedent and consequent design, the secondary purpose of the research was to investigate the association of social physique anxiety and psychological variables pertaining to anthropometries, self- and body-evaluation and sports and exercise related factors. Six parts are included in this research. The details are showed as following:In the first part, the purpose and framework of the research were generally put forward, and the characteristics of research methods were introduced.The second part reviewed respectively the definition, theories and measures of anxiety, social anxiety (SA) and SPA. And then by teased out, some consideration on the conceptual definitons of SA and SPA were presented.In Part 3, the conceptualization was completed by the exploratory and empirical studies. Based on these results, SPAS applicable to persons of Chinese backgrounds was developed and examined. This part consists of four studies.In Study 1, an open questionnaire, comprised of three questions, was completed by university freshmen and senior middle school students (n=114). This study was aimed at investigating the measurable SPAS properties of Chinese youths and to generate an items pool. The results collected from the 298 statements completed in the open questionnaire showed that the factor, which causedpeople to be anxious about aspects of their physique when they were in socially interactive situations, is actually multi-factored. This study supports the hierarchical model as the SPA for Chinese youths. This model is comprised of three, first-order factors (i.e., worry about other's negative evaluation, discomfort of physique self-presentation and anxious about social comparison) and one, second-order factor (i.e., physique-related, social anxiety). This consideration of the construct of SPA broadens the operational and conceptual definitions of SPA.In Study 2, from the results of the first study and with the original version of the SPAS and by evaluated professionally, a pool of 29 items was generated dealing with physique anxiety. The results from college participants (n=175) were analyzed using item analysis, including Bivariate correlations, correlations comparison and discriminate analysis. To sum up, items 2, 6, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 28 were deleted, thus, narrowing the SPAS to 19 items.In Study 3, the results of sub-sample groups for purposes of exploratory factorial analysis (EFA, n=189) and confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA, n=206) showed SPAS had a good factorial validity. Cronbach's Alpha coefficients (n=189) and re-test reliability correlation coefficients (n=42) exceeded the usual threshold of acceptability.In Study 4, from the results of Study 3, a Physique-related, Social Anxiety Scale (SPAS) for Chinese Youths was formed with three subscales. This 15-item scale was administered to participants (n=232). The participants were also evaluated using the Interaction Anxiety Scale (IAS), Physical Self-worth (PSW) and Physical Attractive (AB). Cronbach'Alph coefficents for the SPAS subscales were consistently high. And results showed best fit for the three, first-order factors subordinated to one second -order SPA factor model. Correlations between SPAS subscales and IAS and PSW and AB suggest that SPAS has good construct validity. These results support that the Social Physique Anxie...
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