Developing a shyness scale for Japanese junior high school students

In this study we developed a Shyness scale for Japanese junior high school students and examined the reliability and the validity of this scale. In this study, 90 “Shyness” items and items assessing tendencies theoretically linked to shyness (for example, self-consciousness or self-esteem) were administered to 577 junior high school students in Japan; 299 of the 577 students were administered also the SPI (Shimoda-shiki Personality Inventory). Four factors (Behavioral Inhibition in Personal Relationships, Fear of Negative Evaluation by Others, Lack of Confidence, and Private Self-Consciousness) were extracted by principal components analysis. The coefficient alpha reliabilities of the 4 shyness subscales were sufficient and demonstrated the validity of the shyness scale, which was confirmed by correlations between the shyness subscales and the SPI subscales.