A multi-ethnic examination of socioevaluative fears

Established and emerging cognitive models of social anxiety have provided researchers and clinicians with a solid foundation for understanding and treating this phenomenon. Much of the support for these models, however, has been derived from predominantly Caucasian samples. While the evidence supports the concept of socioevaluative fears as being universal, ethnic/cultural influences can dramatically alter the cognitive profile of the fears. The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-ethnic equivalence of the bivalent fear of evaluation model of social anxiety among an ethnically diverse sample of 799 undergraduate students from the United States. A series of confirmatory factor analyses indicated good model fit for each of the ethnic groups examined, and that holding factor loadings and latent variances and covariances equivalent did not alter model fit significantly.