Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESDSM-IV–Defined Anxiety Disorder Symptoms in South African Children
Section snippets
Participants and Procedure
Participants were 665 children in grades 3 to 7 (mean age = 10.7 years, SD = 1.6) at four primary schools in the neighborhood of Stellenbosch, a relatively small South African city west of Cape Town, with a population of less than 50,000. South African children are defined as “non-Western,” as they live in a country of which population and economy share many features with the other nations on the African continent. Cases containing missing values were deleted. Eventually, complete data sets
Psychometric Properties of SCAS and SCARED in South African Children
The SCAS and the SCARED were reliable: Cronbach α values for the total scores of the SCAS and SCARED were .92 and .90, respectively, and .65 or higher for the various subscales. The only exception was the school phobia subscale of the SCARED, which had an α of .50.
Significant gender differences were found for all SCAS and SCARED scales (SCAS total anxiety score:t589 = 6.4, p < .001; SCARED total anxiety score:t608 = 5.4, p < .001), with girls exhibiting higher levels of anxiety disorder
DISCUSSION
The current study examined DSM-IV–defined anxiety disorder symptoms in a large sample of normal South African schoolchildren by means of two self-report questionnaires: the SCAS and the 41-item SCARED. Results can be catalogued as follows. First, the reliability of both scales was sufficient, but their convergent validity appeared modest. That is, not all SCAS scales were convincingly linked to their SCARED counterparts. Second, while the original factor structure of both questionnaires did not
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The authors thank the Wes-Kaapse Onderwys Department in South Africa and the staff and children of the four schools for their participation in the study.
Correspondence to Dr. Muris, Universiteissingel 50, 6229 ER Maastricht, the Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected].
DOI: 10.1097/01.CHI.0000024843.60748.08