Publication Date
8-1-2024
Journal
Child Psychiatry & Human Development
DOI
10.1007/s10578-022-01455-z
PMID
36264411
PMCID
PMC10115911
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
8-1-2025
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Author MSS
Abstract
A clear understanding of the item content of psychological assessments is critical but often overlooked. This study describes the content overlap of seven commonly used and psychometrically validated measures of anxiety among children and adolescents. Symptom codes were created for all items across measures and items were sorted by these codes, which all fell into specific symptom categories. We conducted two analyses of all items: a "bottom-up" content categorization approach, which used symptom categories that were developed during this study, and a "top-down" DSM-5 categorization which mapped items onto symptoms of anxiety disorders in the DSM-5. Findings reveal a weak mean overlap across the included measures of youth anxiety. This suggests that the scope of anxiety measures should be carefully considered when designing studies, interpreting research, or assessing youth in clinical practice. Further research is needed to develop and establish a coding scheme for a more objective, comprehensive content analysis.
Keywords
Humans, Child, Adolescent, Self Report, Female, Male, Anxiety Disorders, Psychometrics, Anxiety, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Anxiety, Self-report measures, Assessment, Child, Adolescent
Published Open-Access
yes
Recommended Citation
Kook, Minjee; Clinger, Jane W; Lee, Eric; et al., "A Content Analysis of Self-report Child Anxiety Measures" (2024). Faculty and Staff Publications. 6104.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/baylor_docs/6104
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