Brief measures to screen for social phobia in primary care pediatrics.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the usefulness of screening measures to detect social phobia among youth in a primary care setting. METHODS Families recruited from a pediatric primary care setting completed by mail the Social Anxiety Scale (SAS), the Social Worries Questionnaire (SWQ), and the social phobia subscale of the Screen for Child Related Anxiety Disorders (SCARED). Diagnoses were obtained from 190 parent interviews. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were used to determine the utility of the measures as screening instruments. RESULTS Most of the parent report measures, including the single item ("My child is shy") from the SCARED, were at least moderately accurate screeners and performed best for the generalized subtype of social phobia. CONCLUSION The use of valid, brief screening instruments can significantly improve the feasibility of detecting social phobia among youth in primary care pediatric settings.