Abstract Background Although social anxiety disorder is one of the most frequent disorders, it often remained unrecognized. Utilizing brief, yet reliable screening tools, such as the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS-6) and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS-6) are helping to solve this problem in parts of Western Europe and the US. Still some countries, like Hungary, lag behind. For this purpose, previous studies call for further evidence on the applicability of the scales in various populations and cultures, as well as the elaborative validity of the short forms. Here, we aimed to provide a thorough analysis of the scales in five studies. We employed item response theory (IRT) to explore the psychometric properties of the SIAS-6 and the SPS-6 in Hungarian adults (n = 3213, age range:19–80) and adolescents (n = 292, age range:14–18). Results In both samples, IRT analyses demonstrated that the items of SIAS-6 and SPS-6 had high discriminative power and cover a wide range of the latent trait. Using various subsamples, we showed that (1) the scales had excellent convergent and divergent validity in relation to domains of anxiety, depression, and cognitive emotion regulation in both samples. Further, that (2) the scales discriminated those with a history of fainting or avoidance from those without such history. Lastly, (3) the questionnaires can discriminate people diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (n = 30, age range:13–71) and controls. Conclusions These findings suggest that the questionnaires are suitable for screening for SAD in adults and adolescents. Although the confirmation of the two-factor structure may be indicative of the validity of the “performance only” specifier of SAD in DSM-V, the high correlation between the factors and the similar patter of convergent validity might indicate that it is not a discrete entity but rather a part of SAD; and that SAD is latently continuous.
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