Development Of The Social Anxiety Related Self-focus Scale For College Students

Self-focused attention,which mainly means the perception of one’s own inner affective and physical sensations and concern at these feelings,is often considered as the core cognition feature of people with social anxiety disorders.Researchers conceived that different modes of self-focused attention may induce different impact on people’s later affects and thoughts:experiential self-focus was propitious to the metabolism of affects,while analytical self-focus would lead to overthink and self-denial.However,the concrete influencing factors of these two modes of self-focus as well as their valence remained indistinct.Concering these limitations of previous study,this study focusing on the theme of social anxiety has constructed a more comprehensive and distinct theoretical framework and has provided a measuring tool for further research of self-focused attention.The study consisted of three parts:The first part combined a semi-structured interview aiming at investigating the respondents’ psychic reality about their inner feelings,experience and thoughts after they were awareness of their anxious responses or symptoms(such as feeling of tense,blush)and propoesing a theoretical model based on coding results;The second part conducted the scale development based on the theoretical model proposed by interview research,literature review and panel discussion.After that,a part of items were expurgated through item and factor analysis.The reliability and validity of the scale were examined;The third part implemented the analysis of the demographic variables of the sample data.The results were as follows:1.After awareness of their anxious responses in social interaction,colleges students may felt timid,panic or easy,and they were engaged in these cognitive activities such as "self blame","positive connotation" and "consequence contemplation".2.Social Anxiety Related Self-Focus Scale for College Students contained 20 items totally,which was made up of five factors-named "Timid","Easy","Self Blame","Positive Connotation" and "Consequence Contemplation" respectively.And the scale presented a double-stage factor structure.Specifically,"Timid","Self Blame"and "Consequence Contemplation" can be classified as the secondary factor"Symptom Rejection",meanwhile,"Easy" and "Positive Connotation" can be can be classified as the secondary factor "Symptom Acceptance";Five factors of the first stage and two factors of the second stage explained 57.17%and 68.80%of the total variance respectively.The fit indices of confirmatory analysis were x2/df=2.63,TLI=0.89,CFI=0.91,GFI=0.92,AGFI=0.90,RMSEA=0.06.The Cronbach’s αcoefficient and the four weeks retest coefficient of the total scale were 0.81,0.84 respectively.The Cronbach’s a coefficient and the four weeks retest coefficient of factors of the scale were 0.64～0,86,0.57～0.72 respectively.The correlation coefficients of total scale with IAS、SPS and SAQ were 0.67、0.29 and-0.68 respectively.The results reveal that the Social Anxiety Related Self-Focus Scale for College Students has satisfactory reliability and validity,it can be used as a measuring tool for social anxiety related self-focused attention for college students.3.There were discrepancies between different gender and grade of college students’ social anxiety related self-focused attention.Female students maintained a larger extent of maladaptive feature of self-focus.On the other hand,graduate students maintained a larger extent of adaptive feature of self-focus and a smaller extent of maladaptive feature of self-focus.