Social Anxiety and Peer Relations Among Adolescents: Testing a Psychobiological Model
Section snippets
Participants
Participants in the study were 1,179 students (594 males and 585 females) in grades four (114; 64 males and 50 females), six (210; 95 males and 115 females), seven (325; 164 males and 161 females), eight (285; 145 males and 140 females), nine (169; 77 males and 92 females), and eleven (76; 49 males and 27 females). Students were recruited from nine schools; five from public and parochial schools in a mid-sized Midwestern city and three from public and parochial schools in a small, rural town in
Gender and grade effects
Previous research with the SAS-A has indicated a gender difference, with girls reporting greater social anxiety than boys (LaGreca, 1989). The sample presented in this study also produced significant gender differences on the SAS-A. Girls reported higher scores than did boys on the SAS-A total score and the FNE and SAD-N subscales, with no difference on the SAD-G subscale. Means and standard deviations for boys and girls on the SAS-A and associated F-tests are presented in Table 1. There were
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to test Trower and Gilbert’s (1989) model of social anxiety with a sample of adolescents. Youth were classified as cooperative, friendly dominant, hostile dominant, or submissive, based on sociometric peer nominations for four behavioral descriptors. It was hypothesized that submissive adolescents would evidence greater social anxiety than those classified as cooperative, friendly dominant, or hostile dominant. This hypothesis was largely supported. Students in the
Acknowledgements
Completion of this project was made possible by support from National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) small grant 5R03MHS263802 awarded to the second author.
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