Development, Validation and Standardization of the Social Anxiety Scale for Higher Education Students (SAS-HES)

The present study describes the development and psychometric evaluation of the Social Anxiety Scale for Higher Education Students (SAS-HES), a measure designed to assess social anxiety among students enrolled in higher education institutions. An initial pool of 50 items was generated based on relevant theoretical frameworks and existing literature on social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, social interaction difficulties and social avoidance. A panel of experts evaluated the items for relevance, clarity, comprehensibility and appropriateness, resulting in the removal of 23 items. The preliminary 27-item scale was administered to a sample of 500 higher education students (250 males and 250 females) drawn from diverse academic disciplines. Item analysis led to the deletion of four items with low or negative corrected item-total correlations, yielding a final 23-item scale. The SAS-HES demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .937), representing an improvement over the preliminary 27-item version (α = .923). Exploratory factor analysis using principal components extraction with varimax rotation suggested a five-factor structure (KMO = .831; Bartlett’s χ²(253) = 8280.618, p < .001), accounting for 67.75% of the total variance. Descriptive statistics indicated a mean score of 68.74 (SD = 16.32), with acceptable skewness (-.406) and kurtosis (-.714), suggesting an approximately normal distribution. Normative percentile values (P10 = 48, P25 = 57, P50 = 70, P75 = 85, P90 = 88) were established to facilitate score interpretation and classification of social anxiety levels from Very Low to Very High. The findings provide preliminary evidence for the reliability and construct validity of the SAS-HES and establish preliminary norms for its use. The scale addresses the need for a culturally relevant measure of social anxiety among higher education students and may be useful in research, counselling, student mental health services and educational settings. Future studies are encouraged to confirm the factor structure through confirmatory factor analysis and further examine the scale’s validity across diverse populations and contexts.