Social Anxiety: Prevalence and Gender Correlates among Young Adult Urban College Students

Social anxiety is a debilitating disorder often affecting everyday functioning of young adults. This developmental period has challenges in the domains of academics, career, and relationships. Thus, experience of social anxiety, even if subclinical, can be doubly challenging. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of social anxiety among young adults of urban college students in Bangalore, India. Participants of the study were a group of 472 college students comprising 250 males and 222 females. They were screened for social anxiety using Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) developed by Caballo et al. (2015) which measures five domains.  It was found that 28.60% experience social anxiety which seems significant enough to demand attention. The percentage of males and females that experienced social anxiety was 27.2% and 30.18% respectively, establishing that there is no significant relationship between social anxiety and gender. Gender did not seem to correlate with any of the domains of social anxiety.