A self-report measure of subtle avoidance and safety behaviors relevant to social anxiety: Development and psychometric properties
Abstract
According to cognitive theories, safety-seeking behaviors are crucial in both the maintenance and management of social anxiety. In order to facilitate assessment of these behaviors the Subtle Avoidance Frequency Examination (SAFE) was developed. Three factors emerged from the SAFE, which appeared to reflect active "safety" behaviors, subtle restriction of behavior, and behaviors aimed at avoiding or concealing physical symptoms. The SAFE demonstrated strong internal consistency, good construct validity and the ability to discriminate between clinical and non-clinical participants. In addition, the SAFE was responsive to the effects of treatment. Given its excellent psychometric properties, the SAFE may be useful to further investigate the role of safety strategies in social anxiety and to assess treatment outcomes.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Prior work has shown that safety behaviors decrease more after CBT than after a stress management control.
“The frequency of safety behaviors has previously been shown to decrease more following CBT compared to a stress management control (Cuming et al., 2009).”
From Group CBT versus MBSR for social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial. (2016) · cites this paper as Cuming et al., 2009
The SAFE has good discriminant and construct validity in patients with social anxiety disorder.
“It has good discriminant and construct validity in patients with SAD”
From Group CBT versus MBSR for social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial. (2016) · cites this paper as Cuming et al., 2009
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 25 · Cited by 194
- Authors
- Cuming, S., Rapee, R. M., Kemp, N., Abbott, M. J., Peters, L., & Gaston, J. E.
- Affiliations
- Macquarie University (AU)
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Rapee, Ronald M.
- Venue
- Journal of Anxiety Disorders
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2009-10
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 879-883
- ISSN
- 0887-6185 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2004991254
- Cited by
- 194
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 7.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Anxiety Disorders (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychological Treatments and Assessments
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Keywords
- social anxiety, safety behavior, safety-seeking behavior, self-report measures, psychometric properties, treatment outcome assessment
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Australia, Avoidance Learning, Defense Mechanisms, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Personality Inventory, Phobic Disorders, Psychometrics, Psychotherapy, Group, Reference Values, Safety, Reproducibility of Results, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
