Self-Reported Acceptance of Social Anxiety Symptoms: Development and Validation of the Social Anxiety--Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (Report‪)‬

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized as a persistent fear of negative evaluation in social situations. This chronic condition is the fourth most common psychiatric disorder (Kessler, Berglund, Demler, Jin, & Walters, 2005), and is most often treated using cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Although CBT has been widely demonstrated as efficacious for treating social anxiety, many individuals with social anxiety do not benefit from this treatment modality or only experience minimal improvement (Hofmann & Bogels, 2006). Therefore, clinicians and researchers have been drawn to other approaches to treatment, including mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions. Briefly, mindfulness can be described as intentional present moment awareness and a sense of nonjudgmental acceptance towards life's events (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mindfulness is a concept derived from eastern spiritual traditions, and has increasingly been incorporated by clinical researchers into interventions that are applied in medical and mental health settings. The acceptance component is of particular importance to the current study, and is often conceptualized along a continuum. The scope of acceptance ranges from experiential avoidance (or a lack of acceptance), where an individual is unwilling to remain in contact with internal experiences (such as thoughts and feelings), to acceptance, where an individual actively experiences his/her internal events (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999).