Abstract
Tools to assess worry among adolescents exist but do not capture the content of worries. This study reports on the development of a brief, psychometrically sound measure of worry for use with adolescents. Phase 1 involved identification of 27 potential items from existing instruments as well as item generation identified in interviews with students, teachers, school psychologists, and parents. In Phase 2, the candidate items were completed by 835 Australian adolescents (317 males, 508 females, 10 unspecified; Mean age = 13.55, SD = 1.31) from Grades 5 to 10. These data were randomly split in half, and an exploratory factor analysis on the first half identified a two-factor solution with 12 items: Peer Relationships (6 items) and Academic Success and the Future (6 items). On the second half of the data, confirmatory factor analyses supported the factor structure and supported strong invariance across age, socioeconomic status, and presence/absence of a diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder. Weak invariance was evident across sex. Differences across groups are reported as are correlations with indicators of psychological wellbeing. In conclusion, the Perth Adolescent Worry Scale provides both applied professionals and researchers with a short, easy-to-administer, and psychometrically strong instrument to evaluate adolescents’ everyday worries.
Highlights
Worry is a repetitive, future-oriented, and negatively valenced cognitive activity, with worry content often including how one might prevent or cope with negative future events and experiences (Borkovec et al, 2004; Mennin et al, 2005; Newman & Llera, 2011; Watkins et al, 2005)
The significant cognitive, social, and physiological changes that take place during adolescence can impact on the development of worry (Copeland et al, 2014) such that it becomes a prominent cognitive process in everyday functioning, as these worries become more elaborate and abstract (e.g., Arbel et al, 2018; Laugesen et al, 2003; Muris et al, 2002)
Worries are positively correlated with measures of depression among young people (Boelen et al, 2010; ZimmerGembeck et al, 2010) and evidence with adult populations indicates that worry is correlated with depression even after controlling for anxiety (Parmentier et al, 2019; Swee et al, 2019)
Summary
Future-oriented, and negatively valenced cognitive activity, with worry content often including how one might prevent or cope with negative future events and experiences (Borkovec et al, 2004; Mennin et al, 2005; Newman & Llera, 2011; Watkins et al, 2005) It is a key cognitive indicator of, and unifying process across, all anxiety disorders (Barlow, 2002; Berenbaum, 2010; Olatunji et al, 2010). Evidence relating to the association between worry and aggression / disruptive behavior is less clear, with some authors reporting significant effects (Robertson et al, 2018; Whiting et al, 2014), some not (Blain-Arcaro & Vaillancourt, 2016), and some reporting effects only for youth with ASD (Bos et al, 2018) This being the case, an exploratory analysis involved examination of relationships between worry and a measure of externalising. With 15–20% of adolescents presenting with a NDD, prevalence rates rising (King-Dowling et al, 2019), and educational, psychosocial and health care costs for individuals with NDDs being significantly higher than that of their typically developing peers (Beckman et al, 2016; Sciberras et al, 2017; Wilkes et al, 2012), determining potential differences is clearly important
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