Assessing Validity and Reliability of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C) in a Sample of Egyptian School Children

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C), an instrument developed in the United States and applied to a sample of Egypt schoolchildren. The process included the translation of the original material from English into Arabic by the second author . The study was performed using a cross-sectional design and the Arabic version of the SPAIC was applied to a sample of 1000 4th to 6th graders attending public schools in Kafr El Sheikh governorate , Egypt . one hundred subjects were excluded due to an incomplete questionnaire . The final sample consisted of 900 children, 400 girls and 500 boys , ranging in age from 10 to 12 years. The Pearson product-moment correlation showed that the two-week test-retest reliability coefficient was r = 0.820 . The factor structure was almost similar to that reported in previous studies. The results regarding the test-retest reliability and the factor structure were similar to the findings obtained in studies performed on English speaking children. The present study showed that the Arabic language version of SPAI-C is a reliable and valid measure of social anxiety for Egyptian school children.