Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine gender and age differences in social anxiety and the metric characteristics of the Croatian version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (1). The study was conducted on a representative sample of 1000 citizens of the Republic of Croatia using Hendal’s online research panel. The results show that the fear subscale explains 52.1% of the variance for fear and the avoidance subscale explains 47.5% for avoidance. Four of the same factors were obtained on both scales; matching in 20 of the 24 statements, and three factors could be called by the same name as the factors from the original Liebowitz scale. The results of all seven proposed questionnaire measures indicate a statistically significantly higher score for women compared with men and for younger people compared with the elderly, with average effect sizes for overall results, and a proportion of socially anxious participants (14.4%) that was similar to the literature data. In conclusion, the scale can be considered adequate and applicable in further research.