New perspectives on the assessment of the Social Anxiety Disorder: The Formal Psychological Assessment

The assessment of the social anxiety disorder (SAD) is still a debated issue. The diagnostic tools mostly used to assess SAD cover different aspects, but not exhaustively. Consequently, a list of items that allows both detecting and analyzing an exhaustive set of symptoms needs still a better definition. The aim of the present study is to provide such a list, by means of a new methodology, i.e., the Formal Psychological Assessment (FPA). Two lists were built: the former contained an updated set of 17 SAD symptoms, taken from DSM-5, theoretical models and scientific literature; the latter contained 164 items taken from nine well-known SAD questionnaires. By means of formal and logical steps provided by FPA, a final list of forty non-redundant items emerged. Such list exhaustively investigates all the 17 attributes. The relationships among items were also analyzed, providing a model of assessment that could be able to precisely distinguish between patients with a similar score, but two slightly different symptomatologies. Finally, the clinical implications of each feature of the found list are discussed, like the possibility of defining an adaptive and computerized assessment based on a questionnaire built from the found list.