Social Anxiety and Academic Performance of WKU Students:

A Survey Based on SPAI-23

Luo Jin

and Meiru Zhang

Department of Computer Science, Wenzhou-Kean University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China

Keywords Social Phobia, Social Anxiety Disorder, University Students.

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between social phobia and academic performance of Wenzhou-Kean

University students and explores how gender, grade, and college these three factors influence students’

social phobia degree and academic performance. This paper uses the SPAI-23 (Social Phobia and Anxiety

Inventory) scale to test college students' degree of social phobia and applies ANOVA and correlation

analysis to analyse the data. According to the experimental sample, there was a significant difference

between WKU students' academic achievement and their social phobia degree. At the same time, students

who had both high SPAI-23 score and low GPA showed an even distribution in the gender factor but

uneven distributions in grade and college factors.

1 INTRODUCTION

Social phobia is a “marked and persistent fear” of

one or more social or performance situations in

which “the person is exposed to unfamiliar people

or to possible scrutiny by others” (American

Psychiatric Association, 1994). Examples include

social interactions (e.g., having a conversation,

meeting unfamiliar people), being observed (e.g.,

eating or drinking), and performing in front of

others (e.g., giving a speech). In general, the

prevalence of social anxiety disorder is higher in

women than in men in the general population (odds

ratio 1.5-2.2) (Fehm, 2005), and the gender

difference in prevalence is more pronounced in

adolescents and young adults (Wittchen, 1999). In

the clinical sample, the gender ratio of males was

equal to or slightly higher than that of males, and it

was hypothesized that gender roles and social

expectations played an important role in explaining

the help-seeking behavior of male patients.

Furthermore, social phobia has become one of the

most common anxiety types in adults (Kessle,

2005), at the same time, the prevalence rate among

college students is also very high, for example,

studies from Sweden and India have reported the

prevalence of SAD (social anxiety disorder) among

university students to be 16.1% and 19.5%

respectively, while in several universities in Saudi

Arabia, the figure is even higher, with some more

than 50% (Tillfors, 2007; Shah, 2010; Elhadad,

2017). Moreover, according to Elhadad and his

colleagues, there is also an association between

SAD and decreased academic achievement, weak

clinical exam performance, and avoidance of oral

presentation (Elhadad, 2017). Therefore, it is very

important to understand the situation of social

phobia patients among the existing students at

WKU, and it is not clear what impact social phobia

has on the academic performance of these patients.

In order to get a clear result, we will evaluate the

general situation of social phobia patients on WKU

campus, and the negative or positive impact of this

obstacle on their studies, so as to improve their

mental health and academic performance. The basic

hypothesis is that WKU students' academic

performance is related to social anxiety.

2 RELATED WORKS

When it comes to social phobia, the scales to

identify whether the participants are suffering from

social phobia or not is a very significant tool for

research relating to social phobia because correct

identification always is one important step in this

kind of research. Therefore, there are also much

research whose aim is to develop or improve a

Jin, L. and Zhang, M.

Social Anxiety and Academic Performance of WKU Students: A Survey Based on SPAI-23.

DOI: 10.5220/0012041000003620

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Economic Management and Model Engineering (ICEMME 2022), pages 631-634

ISBN: 978-989-758-636-1

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

631

precise instrument with the error as low as possible

or to develop a specific scale for a particular kind of

person. Till the researchers Turner and Morris did

their study, there was no scale that could be

specifically used for children, which is the reason

for developing a new scale (Beidel, 1995). At that

time, Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI)

was one of the known scales based on the behavior-

analytic methodology developed by Goldfried and

D’Zurilla, and has shown to not only apply to

children but has been proven to be reliable for adults

in general. According to SPAI, they developed a

new scale called SPAI-C, which worked well to

distinguish children with social phobia from normal

controls (Beidel, 1995). Moreover, Liebowitz Social

Anxiety Scale (LSAS) is another reliable scale, and

two groups of researchers tried to improve it in their

studies. One self-report version of LSAS is called

LSAS-SR; it can work well in being used as a good

clinician-administered instrument and performs

better than LSAS (Baker, 2002). Another self-report

version of LSAS is called LSAS-CA, which was an

effective instrument for testing social anxiety

disorder, with 29.5 as its cut-off score (Masia-

warner, 2003). In addition, there was a technique

invented by Rehm and Marston, and a group of

researchers who intended to make some changes to

it and tested whether the revised version could

measure the behavioural dimension of people who

have social phobia nicely (Zuroff, 1978). The

reliability of this technique was tested and found to

be acceptable but pointed out some limitations

which still need improving (Zuroff, 1978).

However, in the actual test, the seven options in

the Likert Scale used by SPAI may cause the

subjects to have errors in ranking (Roberson-Nay,

2007). At the same time, there are too many

questions to reduce the patience of subjects, thus

may increasing the inaccuracy of the results. In

order to reduce the time required for evaluation and

scoring, and to meet the needs of clinicians and

researchers for rapid measurement, a simplified

version of SPAI based on nonparametric item

response theory was developed, and 23 items with

excellent differentiation on social phobia were

retained. At the same time, the five-level scale is

adopted for the items, giving consideration to the

measurement accuracy while retaining the

measurement advantage. After examining, the

statistical changes between the measurement results

of this version (SPAI-23) and the initial version

(SPAI) are almost negligible and have a high degree

of internal consistency.

3 METHODS

Social Cross-sectional, mixed-method research will

be carried out. In this study, students from

Wenzhou-Kean University were randomly selected

as subjects. The quantitative study was carried out in

the form of a questionnaire. The ultimate goal of the

questionnaire survey is to explore whether there is a

relationship between students' GPAs and social

phobia and the factors that may affect this. The

questionnaire rates the participant's likelihood of

having a social phobia based on an abbreviated

version of the SPAI (Social Phobia and Anxiety

Inventory) scale, which is called SPAI-23[12]. Two

hundred questionnaires were released, including the

survey of participants' basic information and

questions from SPAI-23.

The samples were divided into different groups,

which laid the foundation for the following analysis.

In the process of data processing, ANOVA and

correlation analysis will be adopted. Once the

correlation between GPA and social phobia is

confirmed, the possible influencing factors will

become the focus of attention. However, other types

of mental or psychological factors may also be the

reason for poor academic performance. In order to

eliminate such interference as far as possible, we

plan to include an interview in the qualitative part of

the experiment. At the same time, whether

participants suffer from social phobia can be

determined using the SPAI-23 in the Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders scale

published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Three students who met the requirements of a

high SPAI-23 score and low GPA were invited to

participate in this interview. Through the interview,

we further learned whether other factors affect their

academic performance, such as physical reasons.

Whether the participants had other psychological

problems related to social phobia was further

confirmed. They answered some scenario simulation

questions from the SPAI-23 tool, providing more

details than in the questionnaire. In this process, the

factors that cause social phobia are explored.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Quantitative Results

Two hundred questionnaires were distributed, and

finally, 197 valid samples were collected. According

to the guidance of SPAI-23, 30 is adopted as the cut-

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off score, and subjects who scored above 30 on the

questionnaire were judged to have or most likely

have social phobia. In order to explore the

correlation between social phobia and academic

performance measured by GPA, ANOVA analysis

was conducted using SPSS. The 95% confidence

level is used, and based on the p-value obtained as

about 0.040, it is considered that there is a

significant correlation between them.

Table 1: ANOVA based on data collected from the

questionnaire.

N df (total) α P-value

197 196 0.05 0.0402

Then, the result of the correlation analysis

showed a negative correlation between the specific

GPA score and the score on the SPAI-23 scale.

According to the following format, the correlation

coefficient was -0.56.

𝑟

(

𝑋,𝑌

)

𝐶𝑜𝑣(𝑋, 𝑌)



𝑉𝑎𝑟

[

𝑋

]

𝑉𝑎𝑟[𝑌]

For the gender, grade, and college factors, we

found that students who had both high SPAI-23

score and low GPA (target participants) showed an

even distribution in the gender factor but uneven

distributions in grade and college factors. The

freshmen and College of Business & Public

Management relatively had the largest proportion of

target participants.

4.2 Qualitative Results

There were 3 female students participating in the

interview. Each interview took about 15 minutes.

The participants were asked to describe some details

of their feelings, imagining they were experiencing

some virtual scene designed by the researchers, such

as feelings of speaking to the public. All 3

participants said that they indeed feel nervous and

unwilling when asked to do group work or speak to

the public, but they can overcome the feeling of

nervousness when they want to or when they have

to. However, one participant mentioned that she is

always pretty nervous when doing a presentation, so

she will constantly recite what she plans to say

before the speech. This way, she can finish the

speech even when her mind is anxiously blank, but

the performance is always not satisfying for both the

professor and her. She can only complete the speech

but cannot perform it well.

Moreover, all 3 participants agreed that many

other factors, except social phobia, could affect their

GPA. For example, noisy roommates may create a

bad studying or sleeping environment.

5 DISCUSSION

In this study, we used questionnaires to collect basic

information (such as age, gender, GPA, and college)

and social anxiety of WKU students and selected

volunteers for interviews, combining quantitative

and qualitative research. The SPAI survey scale's

abbreviated version, SPAI-23, was used to measure

the degree of students' social anxiety. To a certain

extent, interviews helped us understand what other

factors are related to weak academic performance

(mainly getting a low GPA) besides social anxiety

and enriched the details of the questionnaire, such as

the specific scenes that are easy to cause social

anxiety in academic activities. After that, according

to the analysis of data obtained from the sample, we

found a significant difference between the degree of

social phobia of students and their academic

performance. Moreover, the students who had both

high SPAI-23 score and low GPA showed an even

distribution in the gender factor, but uneven

distributions in grade and college factors. The

freshmen and College of Business & Public

Management tended to have the largest proportion

of target participants, while the target proportion

didn't show an obvious gender difference.

According to the results of the interview, we

inferred that students with social phobia can only

make average academic feedback, which can affect

their GPA and academic performance.

At the same time, due to the limited sample size,

the collected results may have some deviation. For

example, the sample size of the interviewees is

small, only 3 participants cannot have much

representation. Moreover, the analysis of the

distributions of the target participants in gender,

grade, and college factors is relatively rough. It

cannot directly prove that grade and college are the

significant influencing factors of social phobia on

the WKU campus. In addition, we got information

from the interview that other factors can also have a

significant effect on the student’s academic

performance, such as noisy roommates. Therefore,

we infer that different students' main factor affecting

their academic performances is different. Because of

this situation, further research is suggested, and we

advise efforts on the data collecting part.

Social Anxiety and Academic Performance of WKU Students: A Survey Based on SPAI-23

633

In addition, according to the results, especially

the results of our interview, we suggest the

university start to provide special courses for those

students with social phobia, such as courses with the

least amount of speeches and active interactions.

6 CONCLUSION

According to the research, there is sufficient

evidence to show that there is a significant

relationship between students' GPA and their social

phobia degree at WKU. There are not just a few

people with social anxiety. Meanwhile, there are

still other factors that can also have a significant

effect on the student’s academic performance, such

as noisy roommates. Moreover, students with both

social phobia and low GPA seem to be unevenly

distributed in each grade and college, especially in

freshmen and College of Business & Public

Management, but they do not show significant

gender differences. In the future, we hope to further

explore the issues related to social anxiety on the

WKU campus and even in a wider range and

manage to eliminate the unnecessary errors in the

current research.

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