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
Copyright
c
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-
ICEMME 2022 - The International Conference on Economic Management and Model Engineering
632
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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