The definition and measurement of anxiety as a trait and a state in the 12- to 17-year range.

Abstract

Proceeding from past work which gives a unique determination of the general anxiety factor in adults as a second‐order factor, the investigators continued with a similar attack in the early adolescent period (12–18 years). Using the HSPQ (High School Personality Questionnaire) primary factors as markers, they found a second‐order factor loaded essentially as for adults, on ego weakness (C ‐), guilt proneness (O), threctia (H ‐), ergic tension (Q4), and defective self‐sentiment (Q3 ‐), but adding excitability (D), not used as a scale in the adult 16 PF.The essential form of the research was repeated three times, on high‐school samples (n = 300, 190 and 200), each time introducing a fresh batch of prospective anxiety items and selecting by item analysis against the factor as the basis of concept validity. This design is considered necessary because of unavoidable ‘wobble’ in factor rotation in any one study and because items valid on one group do not always prove valid on others. On this basis, the most consistently valid items for the second‐order factor were incorporated in a High School Anxiety Scale of two equivalent forms (A and B), with 40 items in each.The research then turned to distinguishing and measuring anxiety as a state by using differential R‐technique (factoring of change scores) rather than the above R‐technique (individual difference factoring). The HSPQ, plus additional anxiety items, was given to 250 children, who were retested after one month. Factoring the change scores showed, as with adults, a second‐order pattern not very different from that for the trait. However, the selection of items, the change on which correlated best with the change score on C ‐, D, H ‐, O, Q3 ‐, and Q4 (the second‐order anxiety state) duly weighted, yielded a state scale (40 items) only moderately correlated with the above trait scale. However, the inevitable doubling of error variance in dR analysis calls for one or more additional factor checks on the validity of items in the state scale.