Method Revised
1
Generalized Anxiety and Shyness in College Students
Is there a relationship between anxiety and shyness among college students?
Candi Jackson
Northwestern State University
PSYC 4490 Senior Research Seminar
Dr. Jennifer Hodges-Crowder
October 8, 2026
Method
Sample/Participants
The present study will examine the relationship between generalized anxiety and shyness among college students who are 18 years of age or older.
Instrumentation
The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) will assess generalized anxiety, and the Expanded Revised Scale will assess shyness. These instruments are chosen because previous research supports their reliability and validity.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)
GAD-7 is a scale of 7 items to determine the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. White and Karr (2023) studied the psychometric characteristics of the GAD-7 in 583 undergraduate college students. The researchers found excellent reliability for the GAD-7 total score, with both Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega equal to .91 (White & Karr, 2023). The study also demonstrated convergent validity, as GAD-7 scores were highly correlated with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait scale (r = .70, p < .001) (White & Karr, 2023). Furthermore, evidence of discriminant validity was found, as the GAD-7 was not related to the Behavioral Inhibition Activation Scale-Reward subscale at all (r = -.04, p = .350) (White & Karr, 2023). The use of the GAD-7 total score was also confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis with college students.
Expanded Revised Shyness Scale
Expanded Revision of the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale and assessed other shyness and social anxiety measures in 801 adults (aged 18 to 74 years). The strong relationship among the shyness measures and the construct validity that was supported by the factor analyses were reported in the Results of Brook and Willoughby (2019). The shyness and social anxiety measures were strongly correlated and had a common factor, and they were also different from sociability. The results demonstrate that the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale reflects the characteristics of shyness and is suitable for research that aims to investigate shyness as a psychological construct (Brook &Willoughby, 2019).
Design & Procedures
Participants will be asked for informed consent and then complete the GAD-7 and Expanded Revised Shyness Scale. The scores on the two measures will be examined to determine whether generalized anxiety and shyness are significantly correlated in college students.
Proposed Analysis
The quantitative research design for the current investigation will use SPSS Version 30 for data analysis. Descriptive statistics will be calculated for the demographic characteristics of 200 participants, age18 and older, gender, and race/ethnicity. The proposed analysis will be a Pearson correlation to investigate the relationship between generalized anxiety, as measured by the GAD-7 total score, and shyness, as measured by the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale total score, among college students. The Pearson correlation will determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the two variables and whether that relationship is positive or negative. There is no independent or dependent variable in this analysis because the purpose is to examine the association between two continuous variables. If the correlation is positive, it will indicate that higher levels of generalized anxiety are associated with higher levels of shyness. The results of the Pearson correlation will be used to determine whether the hypothesis is confirmed or not.
References
Brook, C. A., & Willoughby, T. (2019). Shyness and social anxiety assessed through self-report: What are we measuring? Journal of Personality Assessment, 101(1), 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2017.1388808
White, A. E., & Karr, J. E. (2023). Psychometric properties of the GAD-7 among college students: Reliability, validity, factor structure, and measurement invariance. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 11(3), 321–333. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000382