Social Phobia Inventory SPIN
Social Phobia Inventory SPIN overview
Creator and Context
The Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) is a 17 item self report measure of social anxiety.
It was developed by Kathryn Connor, Jonathan Davidson and colleagues at Duke University Medical Center and published in 2000. A three item short form, the Mini-SPIN, is also published as a rapid screener.
Presenting Conditions
The SPIN covers three domains of social anxiety:
Fear of social and performance situations
Avoidance of those situations
Physiological arousal, including blushing, sweating and trembling
Administration
Self administered. The person rates how much each problem has bothered them during the past week, from Not at all (0) to Extremely (4).
Desired Audience
Adults with social anxiety disorder. It has also been validated in adolescents.
Social anxiety is the disorder people are least likely to raise themselves, because raising it means talking about themselves. A short self report instrument at intake gets past that, and the three domain structure tells you whether the treatment target is fear, avoidance or physiological arousal.
Considerations
A screening and severity measure, not a diagnostic instrument.
The cut off was derived in mixed clinical and community samples, and performance varies by culture and age group.
Severity band tables circulating on assessment aggregator sites are not traceable to the original publication. The defensible number is the cut off of 19.
Copyright is held by the authors and Duke University. Permission should be confirmed before commercial deployment.
How to score the Social Phobia Inventory SPIN
Conducting the assessment
The person rates 17 items from 0 to 4 for the past week.
Interpretation
Items are summed to give a total from 0 to 68.
A score of 19 or above distinguishes people with social phobia from controls (Connor et al., 2000). In an independent validation, that threshold gave sensitivity of 82.2 percent and specificity of 77.6 percent.
The original publication does not define graded severity bands.
Clinical Considerations
Use the cut off of 19 as a prompt for assessment, not as a diagnosis.
Look at which domain is driving the score. High avoidance with modest fear usually means the person has organised their life around the problem, which changes the treatment plan.
Use the Mini-SPIN where a rapid screen is all that is needed.
Social Phobia Inventory SPIN use cases
Screening for social anxiety disorder
Measuring severity across fear, avoidance and physiological arousal
Tracking response to treatment
Research in social anxiety
Category
Anxiety
Research Summary
Connor, K. M., Davidson, J. R. T., Churchill, L. E., Sherwood, A., Foa, E., & Weisler, R. H. (2000). Psychometric properties of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN). British Journal of Psychiatry, 176(4), 379 to 386.
Antony, M. M., Coons, M. J., McCabe, R. E., Ashbaugh, A., & Swinson, R. P. (2006). Psychometric properties of the Social Phobia Inventory: Further evaluation. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(8), 1177 to 1185.
Connor, K. M., Kobak, K. A., Churchill, L. E., Katzelnick, D., & Davidson, J. R. T. (2001). Mini-SPIN: A brief screening assessment for generalized social anxiety disorder. Depression and Anxiety, 14(2), 137 to 140.
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