TITLE:
A comparison of a patient-rated visual analogue scale with the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale for social anxiety disorder: A cross-sectional study
AUTHORS:
Hiromi Okitsu, Jitsuki Sawamura, Katsuji Nishimura, Yasuto Sato, Jun Ishigooka
KEYWORDS:
Social Anxiety Disorder; Visual Analogue Scale; Kappa Coefficient; Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient; Wilcoxon Rank Sum Tests; Patient Demographics
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Psychiatry,
Vol.4 No.1,
January
10,
2014
ABSTRACT: Introduction: The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale
(LSAS), used to assess the severity of social anxiety disorder (SAD), requires
considerable effort and time to complete. The aims of this study were: 1) to
investigate whether a visual analogue scale (VAS) could be linear with the LSAS
and substitute for the LSAS, 2) to relate such a VAS instrument to patient demographics.
Methods: Fifty SAD patients were assessed using the LSAS and VAS instruments
completed by both patients and doctors at the same session. We then drew
distributions and calculated the Spearman’s ρ and κ coefficient values (divided at
the median for each scale) between patient and doctor assessments. Next, each
pair among the scores for the LSAS, the patient VAS and the doctor VAS was
compared using Wilcoxon rank sum tests according to patient life profile data.
Results: Scatter plots of pairs of scores were obtained. Spearman’s ρ was 0.661 between the LSAS and the
patient VAS, 0.461 between the LSAS and the doctor VAS, and 0.494 between VAS
scores of patients and doctors. The κ coefficients were 0.501 between the LSAS and patient VAS, 0.251 between the
LSAS and doctor VAS, and 0.425 between patient VAS and doctor VAS (for all six,
p