Assessing Peer-Related Impairments Linked to Adolescent Social Anxiety: Strategic Selection of Informants Optimizes Prediction of Clinically Relevant Domains

Y

42

Institute of Education Sciences (ED)

R324A180032

Anxiety; Peer Influence; Early Adolescents; Parent Attitudes; Sampling; Prediction; Peer Relationship; Evaluation Methods; Screening Tests; Familiarity; Interpersonal Competence; Friendship; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Correlation

Maryland; District of Columbia; Virginia

10.1016/j.beth.2022.06.010

Socially anxious adolescents commonly experience impaired interpersonal functioning with unfamiliar, same-age peers. Yet, we lack short screening tools for assessing peer-related impairments. Recent work revealed that a parent-reported, three-item screening tool produced scores that uniquely related to social anxiety concerns. However, this tool ought to go beyond linking impairments to service "needs" (i.e., social anxiety symptoms). This tool should also inform the "goals" of services, in particular by linking impairments to key domains relevant to therapeutically addressing adolescents' anxiety-related needs, such as social skills when interacting with unfamiliar peers. This requires an assessment approach that involves strategic selection of informants who vary in their expertise for observing anxiety-related needs, as well as the therapeutic goals for addressing anxiety-related impairments (e.g., social skills within peer interactions). We leveraged parents' reports to link impairments to social anxiety-related needs. To link impairments to social skills, we leveraged informants (i.e., "unfamiliar untrained observers;" UUOs) who observed adolescents within tasks designed to simulate interactions with same-age, unfamiliar peers. We tested this approach using a mixed-clinical/community sample of 134 14-to-15-year-old adolescents. We leveraged multi-informant survey reports to assess adolescent social anxiety, and trained independent observers rated adolescents' social skills within unfamiliar peer interactions. Parents' reports performed best when distinguishing adolescents on referral status and predicting survey-reported social anxiety, whereas only UUOs' reports predicted independent observers' social skills ratings. These findings inform the strategic selection of informants for assessing impairments that commonly prompt the need for adolescents to access mental health services for social anxiety. [This paper will be published in "Behavior Therapy."]

As Provided

Yes

2022

ED624120