Discussion

4

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 current investigation will be an archival study that will be included in a larger scale study. The participants will be around 200 college students in attendance at Northwestern State University of Louisiana (NSULA). The participants will be male and female, at least 18 years old. Informed consent will be obtained from all participants before participating. Participant demographics form and informed consent to participate in the research is placed on Moodle.

Instrumentation

The scores of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) will be used to assess generalized anxiety and the Expanded Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale will be used to assess shyness. Information on demography will be gathered using the demography questionnaire placed on Moodle.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)

GAD-7 is a self-report 7 item questionnaire which assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms in the previous two weeks. Responses are indicated on a four-point scale from 0 (Not at all) to 3 (Nearly every day); scores are totaled to provide a total score from 0 to 21, with higher scores representing higher levels of anxiety (White & Karr, 2023). In 582 undergraduate students, White and Karr (2023) found the GAD-7 to have high reliability (α = .91; ω = .91), high convergent validity with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory–Trait subscale (r = .70, p < .001), and high discriminant validity with the Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scale–Reward subscale (r = −.04, p = .350). Additionally, White and Karr (2023) found a cutoff score of 10 to have acceptable sensitivity and specificity in identifying GAD.

Expanded Revised Shyness Scale

The Expanded Revision of the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale is a self-report measure of shyness. In adults age 18-74 years (N = 801), Brooks and Willoughby (2019) examined the relationship between the measures of shyness and social anxiety, and found high correlations, loading on a common factor, and scores that were statistically independent from sociability. The results of the current study lend support to the construct validity of the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale for research in the area of shyness as a psychological construct (Brooks & Willoughby, 2019).

Design & Procedures

The present study will form part of a greater, archival study which will be submitted to the NSULA Institutional Review Board (IRB) prior to data collection. Participants will be informed about participation and give their consent. Data will be collected anonymously via a survey link on SurveyMonkey. A debriefing form will be given after the survey is completed. Results will be available in total and participants can receive their results via email to the principal investigator.

Proposed Analysis

The data analysis will be done quantitative using SPSS Version 23. The information of Participants age, gender and race/ethnicity will be obtained and will be presented in descriptive statistics. The relationship between generalized anxiety (scored by the GAD-7 total) and shyness (scored by the Expanded Revised Shyness Scale total) will be examined among college students using a Pearson correlation. The Pearson correlation coefficient (r) is used to indicate the direction and strength of the relationship between two continuous, normally distributed variables, and its values will range from −1 to +1. In a positive correlation, an increase in one variable would be related to an increase in the other. An increase in one variable would be correlated with an increase in the other in a positive correlation. The results will be used to determine whether or not the hypothesis is supported.

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