%0 Journal Article %T Aspectos cognitivos do falar em p¨²blico: valida£¿£¿o de uma escala de autoavalia£¿£¿o para universit¨¢rios brasileiros %A Os¨®rio %A Fl¨¢via de Lima %A Crippa %A Jos¨¦ Alexandre de Souza %A Loureiro %A Sonia Regina %J Revista de Psiquiatria Cl¨ªnica %D 2012 %I Universidade de S?o Paulo %R 10.1590/S0101-60832012000200002 %X background: fear of public speaking is the most prevalent fear in the general population and among persons with a social anxiety disorder (sad). nevertheless, studies about the assessment of this specific phenomenon are still needed. objectives: to examine the validity of the self statements during public speaking (ssps) scale in a general population of brazilian university students (gp, n = 2314), in an sad sample (n = 88), and in a non-sad sample (n = 90). methods: the study was conducted in two phases: a) completing a self-administered questionnaire in the classroom, b) participating in a telephone and face-to-face interview. results: the ssps showed low/median correlations with the social phobia inventory (gp = 0.22-0.65; sad = 0.28-0.32; non-sad = 0.21-0.30), the beck anxiety inventory (gp = 0.18-0.53; sad = 0.25-0.33; non-sad = 0.22-0.25), and the brief social phobia scale (sad = not significant, non-sad = 0.23-0.31) in all the samples, especially in the gp sample. factorial analysis indicated the presence of two factors associated with positive and negative self-assessment. the study of discriminative validity demonstrated that the ssps has the ability to differentiate between cases and non-cases of sad. discussion: the ssps is an adequate instrument to be used within the brazilian context. the positive self-assessment subscale seems to be more effective for the evaluation of sad samples. the negative self-assessment subscale appears to have a better screening characteristic in the general population of university students. %K public speaking %K social anxiety %K validation %K scale. %U http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0101-60832012000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en