The use of analogue samples, as opposed to clinical groups, is common in mental health research, including research on social anxiety disorder (SAD). Recent observational and statistical evidence has raised doubts about the validity of current methods for establishing analogue samples of individuals with clinically significant social anxiety. Here, we used data from large community samples of clinical and nonclinical participants to determine new cutoff scores on self-report measures of social anxiety symptoms and symptom-related impairment. We then examined whether using these newly determined cutoff scores alone or in combination improves the identification of individuals who have SAD from those who do not, revealing the most ideal cutoff combination to be 34 or above on the Social Phobia Inventory and 11 or above on the Sheehan Disability Scale. Finally, we compared the effects of our new cutoff scores with old cutoff scores by extracting analogue samples of participants with high social anxiety from historical data on seven large groups of undergraduate Psychology research participants from the authors' institution spanning the past 5 years (2018-2023). We observed that the new combined cutoff scores identified markedly fewer students as having high social anxiety, lending credibility to their utility. We also observed a striking increase in levels of social anxiety symptoms in the undergraduate population from before to after the COVID-19 pandemic. Of note, most participants were under 30 and identified as Caucasian or Asian women, indicating that future research is needed to examine whether our findings generalize to diverse populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

识别具有临床意义的社交焦虑个体的模拟样本：更新和合并社交恐惧症量表和 Sheehan 残疾量表的临界分数。


与临床组相反，使用模拟样本在心理健康研究中很常见，包括对社交焦虑症 （SAD） 的研究。最近的观察和统计证据对当前方法建立具有临床意义的社交焦虑个体的模拟样本的有效性提出了怀疑。在这里，我们使用了来自临床和非临床参与者的大型社区样本的数据来确定社交焦虑症状和症状相关障碍的自我报告测量的新临界分数。然后，我们检查了单独或组合使用这些新确定的临界分数是否能更好地识别患有 SAD 的个体与未患有 SAD 的个体，揭示了最理想的临界组合是社交恐惧症量表的 34 分或以上和 Sheehan 残疾量表的 11 分或以上。最后，我们通过从过去 5 年（2018-2023 年）作者所在机构的七大组本科心理学研究参与者的历史数据中提取高度社交焦虑参与者的模拟样本，比较了新的临界分数与旧的临界分数的影响。我们观察到，新的综合截止分数确定患有高度社交焦虑的学生明显较少，这为他们的效用提供了可信度。我们还观察到，从 COVID-19 大流行之前到之后，本科生群体的社交焦虑症状水平显着增加。值得注意的是，大多数参与者年龄在 30 岁以下，并被认定为白人或亚洲女性，这表明需要未来的研究来检验我们的研究结果是否适用于不同的人群。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。