Title

Further development of the Child Anxiety Survey: An examination of construct validity via a multitrait-multimethod matrix

Date of Completion

January 1999

Keywords

Education, Educational Psychology|Psychology, Personality|Psychology, Psychometrics

Degree

Ph.D.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to further examine the construct validity of the Child Anxiety Survey (CAS; Passarello, Hintze, & Owen, in press), a narrow-band parent informant report. In addition, the uncertainty regarding parents' reporting abilities was addressed. Currently, there are no narrow-band informant reports that would allow caregivers to identify the core features of anxiety in their children. Parents’ abilities to report on their children's anxious symptoms are an issue of uncertainty in the literature. This is due to parents' tendency to report significantly fewer symptoms of anxiety than their children self-report (Edelbrock, Costello, Dulcan, Conover, & Kala, 1986; Klein, 1991). ^ A community sample of 29 parents was interviewed and completed informant reports about their child(ren)'s anxious symptoms. Four instruments were used in this study including: the Child Anxiety Survey (CAS; Passarello et al., in press), the parent form of the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV: Child Version (ADIS;C-P Silverman & Albano, 1996), the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Rating Scale-IV (ADHD-IV; DuPaul, Power, Anastopoulos, & Reid, 1998), and the parent version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-Version 2.3 (DISC-P; Shafferet al., 1996). A multitrait-multimethod design along with t-tests for dependent correlations were used to examine the convergent and divergent validity of the CAS. The results suggested evidence of convergent validity primarily due to trait variance. Evidence for the divergent validity of the CAS was less clear. Findings within the multitrait-multimethod matrix, limitations to the study, and potential avenues for future studies involving the CAS will be discussed. ^

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