Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR)

The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale was the first clinician-administered scale to evaluate the wide range of social situations that are difficult for individuals with social phobia.

The scale contains 24 items, 13 concerning performance anxiety and 11 concerning social situations. Each item is rated separately for fear:
(0 to 3 = none, mild, moderate, severe) and avoidance behavior (0 to 3 = never, occasionally, often, usually).

Thus, the LSAS provides an overall social anxiety severity rating, and scores on 4 subscales:

1. performance fear
2. performance avoidance
3. social fear
4. social avoidance

As originally designed, the LSAS requires clinician judgment for completing the ratings and is therefore not intended for use as a self-report measure. Its wording, however, is similar to that of a self-rated instrument and it has in fact been used in this manner in pharmacological research.

Social Anxiety Test

This measure assesses the way that social phobia plays a role in your life across a variety of situations.

1. Read each situation carefully and answer two questions about that situation.
2. The first question asks how anxious or fearful you feel in the situation.
3. The second question asks how often you avoid the situation.
4. If you come across a situation that you ordinarily do not experience, we ask that you imagine “what if you were faced with that situation,” and then rate the degree to which you would fear this hypothetical situation and how often you would tend to avoid it. Please base your ratings on the way that the situations have affected you in the last week.