The Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) is available on an open-science basis and permission is granted to anyone looking to use the scale so long as the original citation is provided. The scale is calculated as a simple sum of items, with item #1 reverse-coded. The original article has been cited in 697 articles. This number includes original studies that have used the scale, meta-analyses and systematic reviews. The SAAS has been translated from English to Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Chinese, Malay, Italian, Indonesian, Korean, Persian, Greek, French, Arabic & Chinese. Dr. Hart cannot verify any translations on which he was not a co-author. If you wish to verify the methods used in the translations into a particular language, please contact the corresponding author of that article. 

The SAAS has demonstrated strong convergent validity through its consistent correlations with other established measures of social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and related psychological constructs. It is significantly and positively correlated with the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS; Mattick & Clarke, 1998). the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNE; Leary, 1983), and the Trait Anxiety subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-A; Bieling et al., 1998), while showing a significant negative correlation with self-esteem (Levinson & Rodebaugh, 2011). In both community and clinical samples, SAAS scores are strongly associated with SIAS scores, indicating robust validity across populations (Dakanalis et al., 2016). Within community samples, SAAS scores also show strong correlations with the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SADS), the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), and the BFNE. In clinical samples, the SAAS is highly correlated with the Eating Disorder Examination – Global (EDE) score (Dakanalis et al., 2016). Furthermore, Mills et al., (2018) found that the SAAS is significantly and positively correlated with the Social Discomfort subscale, the BFNE-II, depressive symptoms measured via the PHQ-8, and the SIAS-6. The scale also correlated strongly with body-related concerns, including subscales of the Male Body Attitudes Scale, such as Muscularity and Low Body Fat, and shows moderate correlations with anxiety and eating disorder risk as measured by the EAT-26 (Hart et al., 2015). 

The SAAS is sensitive to group differences across demographic and clinical characteristics. Higher SAAS scores are consistently associated with elevated scores on the EAT-26, which assesses symptoms and characteristics of eating disturbances across dieting, bulimia, and oral control subscales, These associations hold across gender and age groups, with participants who endorsed more disordered eating symptoms reporting higher SAAS scores across age and gender (Dakanalis et al., 2016). Among clinical populations, patients with diffuse systemic sclerosis (SSc)—a severe SSc subtype and chronic autoimmune disease that causes widespread skin thickening—reported significantly higher SAAS scores that those with less severe forms of SSc, which typically affects fewer areas of the body (Mills et al., 2018). Additionally, female and younger patients reported significantly greater social appearance anxiety compared to male and older participants, respectively (Mills et al., 2018). In a large, diverse ethno-racial Canadian sample, South Asian participants reported significantly higher SAAS scores than their East and Southeast Asian peers, while Black, African, and Caribbean participants reported significantly lower SAAS scores (Hart et al., 2015), highlighting the potential influence of cultural and racial identity on appearance-related social concerns. 

Beyond convergent validity, the SAAS has demonstrated strong psychometric properties including unidimensionality, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and incremental validity. Factor analytic studies have consistently confirmed the SAAS’s one-factor structure. Levinson and Rodebaugh (2011) reported a good model fit (CFI/TLI > .95) and demonstrated that the SAAS predicts social anxiety beyond general personality traits such as neuroticism, negative affect, and low self-esteem. Dakanalis et al. (2016) replicated the single-factor structure in both clinical and non-clinical samples and confirmed full measurement invariance across groups, with high test-retest reliability (r > .80) and excellent internal consistency in both community and eating disorder samples. Similarly, Mills et al. (2018) found high internal consistency across various subtypes within their sample, and a one-factor solution was also supported in other cultural validations of the SAAS, including Turkish (Sahin & Topkaya, 2015) and Iranian (Goodarzi et al., 2021) samples. Hart et al. (2015) further supported the scale’s validity in an ethnoracially diverse Canadian sample, reporting excellent internal consistency (α = .96) across the total sample and across ethnoracial subgroups (α range = .87 – .94), and confirming a unifactorial structure with a strong KMO value of .96. These findings collectively establish the SAAS as a reliable and valid instrument across diverse populations.

Download the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale here.

Original Article:

Hart, T. A., Flora, D. B., Palyo, S. A., Fresco, D. M., Holle, C., & Heimberg, R. G. (2008). Development and examination of the social appearance anxiety scale. Assessment, 15(1), 48-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191107306673 (English)

Relevant Articles:

Claes, L., Hart, T.A., Smits, D., Van den Eynde, F., Mueller, A., & Mitchell, J.E. (2011). Validation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in female eating disorder patients. European Eating Disorders Review, 20(5), 406-409. https://doi.org/10.1002/erv.1147 (Dutch)

Dakanalis, A., Carra, G., Calogero, R., Zanetti, M. A., Volpato, C., Riva, G., Clerici, M. &  Cipresso, P. (2016). The Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in Italian adolescent populations:  Construct validation and group discrimination in community and clinical eating disorders samples. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 47, 133-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-015-0551-1 (Italian)

Doğan, T. (2011). An investigation of the psychometric properties of the social appearance anxiety scale in an adolescent sample. Elementary Education Online, 10(1). (pdf) (Turkish)

Donerfe, G., Campos, J., Marôco, J., & da Silva, W.R.. (2021). Cross-cultural adaptation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale to the Portuguese Language. Jornal Brasilerio de Psiquiatria, 70(3). https://doi.org/10.1590/0047-2085000000336 (Brazilian Portuguese)

Goodarzi, M., Noori, M., Aslzakerlighvan, M., Abasi, I. (2021). Persian version of Social Appearance Anxiety Scale: A psychometric evaluation. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, 15(4), e113164. https://doi.org/10.5812/ijpbs.113164. (Persian)

Hart, T.A., Rotondi, N.K., Souleymanov, R. & Brennan, D.J. (2015). Psychometric properties of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale among Canadian gay and bisexual men of colour. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 2(4),470-481.  https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000140

Kadir, N. B. Y. A., Rahman, R. M. A., & Desa, A. (2014). Reliable and validated social appearance anxiety self-report measure among university students. Jurnal Psikologi Malaysia, 27. (pdf) (Malay)

Konstantina Papapanou, T., Bacopoulou, F., Michou, M., Kanaka-Gantenbein, C., Vlachakis, D., Chrousos, G.P., & Darviri, C. (2023). Validation of the Greek version of Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in adolescents and young adults. EMBnet J, 28, e1027. https://doi.org/10.14806/ej.28.0.1027 (Greek)

Lee, M., Kim, M., & Kim, J. (2023). Validation of Korean version of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale. Anxiety and Mood, 19(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.24986/anxmod.2023.19.1.001 (Korean)

Levinson, C.A., & Rodebaugh, T.L. (2011). Validation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale: Factor, convergent, and divergent validity. Assessment, 18(3), 350-356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191111404808

Mills, S.D., Kwakkenbos, L., Carrier, M.E., Gholizadeh, S., Fox, R. S., Jewett, L.R., … & Turner K. (2018). Validation of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in patients with systemic sclerosis: A scleroderma patient-centered intervention network cohort study. Arthritis Care & Research, 70(10), 1557-1562. https://doi.org/10.1002/acr.23514

O’Hara, L., Tahboub-Schulte, S., & Thomas, J. (2016). Weight-related testing and internalized weight stigma predict abnormal eating attitudes and behaviours in Emirati female university students. Appetite, 102, 44-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.01.019 (Arabic)

Putri, B. B. K., Noer, A. H., Pebriani, L. V., & Purba, F. D. (2025). Indonesian translation and adaptation of Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) for early adolescent girls in Indonesia. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 475-485. https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S498021 (Indonesian)

Sahin E., Topkaya, N. (2015). Factor structure of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in Turkish early adolescents. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 3(8), 513-519. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2015.030806

Sommer, S.J., Harel, D., Kwakkenbos, L., Carrier, M., Gholizadeh, S., Gottesman, K., Leite, C., Malcarne, V., & Thombs, B.D. (2020). Assessing differential item functioning for the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale: A Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention Network (SPIN) Cohort Study. BMJ Open, 10, e03739. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-037639 (French)

Yang, H., & Stoeber, J. (2012). The physical appearance perfectionism scale: Development and preliminary validation. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 34, 69-83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-011-9260-7 (Chinese)