Introduction
In the field of social and psychological research, the development of research tools to measure phenomena by attributing quantitative values to them and developing them into continuous variables is a crucial part of data collection and understanding of the phenomena. The reliability and validity of the measuring instruments thus developed is of utmost importance in establishing the value and capability of the constructs. We all can relate to our personal or friends and peers’ childhood experiences of anxiety as a child. The children are more vulnerable as a result of anxiety situations as they have little or no idea as to how to deal with them. The children need to be protected from this vulnerability through research and that is what attracted me to this particular scale for the given assignment apart from my personal interest in child psychology. Further, new scales were developed for the same variable. The first scale was a peer version as and I explained above many childhood peer experiences have promted me to choose the scale as a whole and in the development of a new version measuring the same variable in peer settings I went a step further in ascertaining the children’s anxiety levels. The teachers and mentors play an important role in shaping childhood experiences and I see experiences with teachers as defining moments in childhood particularly when we have been anxious due to one or the other reason. This prompted me to choose the teacher/mentor version as a new child anxiety scale for development.
Instrument
General Description
The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED) Parent version was developed by a team of researchers comprising of Boris Birmaher, Sunita Khetrapal, Marlane Cully, David Brent and Sandra Mckenzie, University of Pittsburgh (1995). The instrument uses a 41 item scale (Appendix A) that measures the anxiety related disorders of children as reported by their parents. The purpose of the scale is to screen for the childhood anxiety disorders including general anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social phobias. The target population for the scale is Children aged 8-10 years and their parents as respondents for the parent version. The scale is intended for use by Clinicians and Psychiatrists. The instrument has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Thai and Spanish languages.
Theoretical definition. Childhood Anxiety disorders refer to the anxiety experienced by children aged 8-10 years such as those including general anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social phobias as reported by their parents as per the parent version of the scale.
Operational definition. The SCARED parent version is a 41 item anxiety scale as felt and reported by parents and used to define how their children of 8-10 years age feel anxious when in particular situations as defined by the scale.
Evaluation and Critique of the SCARED parent version
The unit of analysis used in the SCARED parent version is the parents’ view of the childhood anxiety disorder symptoms. The disorder is a composite disorder comprising of separation anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social phobia. The items in the instrument analyze all the sub units of analysis to contribute to the overall analysis of the child anxiety levels.
Reliability
The scale was screened for reliability through various methods. It was found that the scale has good internal consistency. Thus the responses of the parents on various items of the scale are a good measure of their views on child anxiety of their children. The scale was also checked on the test-retest reliability measure and was found to have good test-retest reliability and goes on to show that parents were pretty sure about the reported anxiety symptoms of their children as a whole.
Validity
The SCARED parent version was also tested for validity and it was found that the children and parent versions of the same had close agreeability with each other and this shows a good level of content validity for the scale. Further, the scale was subjected to discriminant validity test. It was found that scores on various sub scale items such separation anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social phobia as did not correlate with each other. This shows a good level of discriminant validity.
Quality of the Items
The scale is sensitive to treatment response. The main advantage of the scale is that the total time to administer it just 10 ten minutes thus it is brief and gauges three possibilities about the perceived anxiety of the children by the parents namely ‘Not true or hardly ever true’, ‘Somewhat true or Sometimes True’ and ‘Very true or very often true. This shows the quality of the items to quickly and accurately measure what is intended to be measured.
Appropriateness for the Target Population
The scale is quite appropriate to the target population as it is simple and gauges the feelings of the parents about the anxiety levels of their children in certain situations. However, the scale seemingly has a limitation in the sense that feelings of parents about their children might be subject to bias owing to the recent or past divergent behaviors of the children, which usually skews individual perceptions. The scale attempts to measure subjective phenomena based on objective criteria and there is bound to be some detail that might be missed in the process of objectification.
Adequacy of the Theoretical and Operational Definitions
The Theoretical as well as Operational Definitions of the Scale effectively capture the essence of the scale as a measure of the scale in terms of the effectiveness of the items to measure the disorder within the target population through the respondents and also gives a glimpse of the structure and content of the instrument.
Development of New Scales
Scale 1 – Instrument Developed: Child Anxiety Scale: Teacher/Mentor Version
Instrument. The instrument (Appendix B) has been developed to measure the anxiety levels of the children of 8-10 years while in peer and group settings. The 10 item scale measures the anxiety levels of children in various situations as observed by their friends or peers at school or in neighborhood. Childhood anxiety scale in peer settings refers to the anxiety levels of children in situations when they are with friends or peers though not at home but in settings where there are people with whom there is a high possibility of them being non acquainted such as school or playgrounds etc.
Operational definition 1. The Child Anxiety Scale (Friend/Peer Version) is a 10 item anxiety scale that measures the perceptions of the friends and peers about the anxiety levels of the children aged 8-10 as experienced in situations defined by the scale.
Evaluation plan for reliability and validity. The scale 1 developed above has not yet been administered nor tested as yet. Since the items on the scale are designed to measure the anxiety level in peer settings, it is important for the items be suited to eliciting best response from the respondents with respect to the subject population both qualitatively and quantitatively. For this reason the instrument and the scale needs to be measured against reliability since the responds are themselves kids and the questions or items must be designed so as to elicit accurate response and be able to measure what intends to be measured which in this case is the anxiety level of children in peer settings. Similarly the scale and instrument items must be checked for validity as to whether they are the right questions or whether they touch upon an area that really contributes to the measurement of the anxiety levels of the subject population.
Reliability. In order to measure the consistency with which the instrument measures the variable in this case overtime reliability in the form of the test-retest method shall be followed. Anxiety is generally considered to be consistent over a period of time except when certain extraneous factor positively motivate or a psychological intervention is introduced. This means that the anxiety levels of kids in peer settings are likely to have same value as it has this week or maybe next week or next month or so in absence of an intervention. In order to assess the test-retest reliability for the scale 1, a sample where sample size n=30 is randomly chosen. In order to repeatedly administer the test we convey to them in advance and ensure they are ready for repeated testing. Further, we plan the test such that it is administered twice with a gap of one week. The tests are administered, as scheduled, the responses recorded and Pearson’s coefficient of correlation ‘r’ is calculated between the scores. A correlation score r ≥ 0.80 yields a good measure of the scale and the instrument. If however, the correlation is below the requisite level, we need to recheck the structure of the questions as well as for possible interventions that might have been administered over the subject sample.
Further, the instrument shall be checked for internal consistency. In this case out of the 10 ten items 5 even numbered items and other five odd numbered items shall be comprised of two groups formed after splitting the responses of the respondents into two. The correlation coefficient shall be calculated to measure the consistency of responses between the items and thus establish that the items are in fact measuring the child anxiety in peer settings.
Validity. Validity refers to the extent to which the scores represent the variable they intend to measure. Firstly we shall measure the face validity of the scale by assessing superficially based on basic reasoning as to whether the items actually measure what they intend to measure. The validity shall further be tested by using the content validity. The content validity for this scale will check whether it successfully measures the children’s anxiety levels in both learning environment as well as a playful environment, both of which are part of the peer settings .
Scale 2- Instrument Developed: Child Anxiety Scale: Teacher/Mentor Version
Instrument. The instrument (Appendix C) has been developed to measure the anxiety levels of the children of 8-10 years while in learning and other social settings. The 10 item scale measures the anxiety levels of children in various situations as observed by their teachers or mentors at school. Childhood anxiety scale in learning and social settings refers to the anxiety levels of children in situations when they are in the presence of teachers and mentors as well as in settings where there are people with whom there is a high possibility of them being non acquainted such as school or other learning environments.
Operational definition 2. The Child Anxiety Scale (teacher/mentor version) is a 10 item anxiety scale that measures the perceptions or feelings of the teachers/mentors of the children of age 8-10 years about the anxiety levels of the children in school settings.
The reliability and validity of the scale 2 shall be measured in fashion similar to that of scale 1.
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, it is observed that the a scale that measures continuous variables represent a specific phenomena defined both theoretically as well as operationally or behavior which can be quantified and represented by the psychological construct or instrument as developed above. However, the reliability and validity of the instrument is of vital importance in ensuring best results in terms of the capability of the instrument to measure what it is designed to measure.
References
Birmaher, B., Brent, D. A., Chiapetta, L., Bridge, j., Monga, S., & Baugher, M. (1999). Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED). Retrieved from www.pediatricbipolar.com: http://www.pediatricbipolar.pitt.edu/content.asp?id=2333
Price, P. C., Jhangiani, R. s., & Chiang, I.-C. A. (2016). Reliability and validity of Measurement. Retrieved from opentextbc.ca: https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/reliability-and-validity-of-measurement/
Appendix A
Appendix B
Child Anxiety Scale: Friend/Peer Version
Personal Details
Age of the Assessed child.
(should be between 8-10 years)
Gender of the Assessed Child – (Tick) M/ F/Other
Age of the Respondent peer/friend..
Gender of Respondent (Tick) M/ F/Other
Questionnaire
The questions in the scale ask you about how you feel about your friend/peer as specified above. You need to circle the number that most closely corresponds to your feeling about him/her as defined below for every question.
0=Never; 1=Almost Never; 2= Sometimes; 3=often; 4=Very Often
Is your friend/peer worried about whether other people like him or not?0 1 2 3 4
Is your friend/peer nervous?0 1 2 3 4
Does your friend/peer worry about being as good as you or other kids?0 1 2 3 4
Does your friend/peer worry about things in general?0 1 2 3 4
Is your friend/peer impatient or longing to go home or to parents?0 1 2 3 4
Is your friend/peer worried about how good he/she does things?0 1 2 3 4
Does your friend/peer worry about things that have already happened? 0 1 2 3 4
Does your friend/peer like to be with people he/she does not know well?0 1 2 3 4
Does your friend/peer feel shy with people he/she does not know well?0 1 2 3 4
Is your friend/peer shy in general?0 1 2 3 4
Appendix C
Child Anxiety Scale: Teacher/Mentor Version
Personal Details
Age of the Assessed child.
(Should be between 8-10 years)
Gender of the Assessed child – (Tick) M/ F/Other
Gender of Respondent (Tick) M/ F/Other
Questionnaire
The questions in the scale ask you about how you feel about your friend/peer as specified above. You need to circle the number that most closely corresponds to your feeling about him/her as defined below for every question.
0=Never; 1=Almost Never; 2= Sometimes; 3=often; 4=Very Often
Is the student/mentee does not seem to like to be with people he/she is not acquainted well with while at school?0 1 2 3 4
Is the student/mentee nervous in presence of the people he/she does not know well in school?0 1 2 3 4
Is the student/mentee unable to communicate with new students or teachers in school well?0 1 2 3 4
Is the student/mentee shy with new students/teachers or visitors in school?0 1 2 3 4
Is the student/mentee nervous when he/she is asked to perform an activity in conscious presence of other kids or teachers?0 1 2 3 4
Is the child/student/mentee nervous when he/she has to be a part of group activities or team events or school picnics or outings?..0 1 2 3 4
Is the student/mentee shy in general?.0 1 2 3 4
Does the student/mentee complain of headache while at school?0 1 2 3 4
Does the student/mentee complain of stomach ache while at school?0 1 2 3 4
Does the student/mentee abstain from school for no apparent reason?0 1 2 3 4
