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Measures of Anxiety Disorder Symptoms in Adolescents

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Abstract

This study examines select psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliability, and factorial, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity) of three commonly-used measures of anxiety disorder symptoms in adolescents in the context of multi-trait, multi-method matrix analyses. A sample of 331 adolescents (age M = 17.1; 75.3% white; 71.0% female) completed three self-report scales that assess symptoms of separation anxiety, social anxiety, panic, and generalized anxiety, as well as measures of depression, experiential avoidance, and intolerance of uncertainty. Measures of panic disorder symptoms showed poor factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity. A multi-trait, multi-method matrix model to understand the relationships among the measures of separation anxiety, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety symptoms provided a reasonable fit to the data. Measures of separation anxiety showed poor discriminant and criterion validity, suggesting limited relevance of separation anxiety in this adolescent sample. Measures of social anxiety generally showed evidence of adequate-to-good factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity. Measures of generalized anxiety showed adequate –to-good factorial and convergent validity, and poor-to-adequate discriminant validity. The associations of measures of social and generalized anxiety with measures of depression, experiential avoidance, and intolerance of uncertainty were at least partially independent of method variance. The findings of this study add to the growing literature that evaluates the strengths and limitations of these scales for clinical practice and research.

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Data Availability

Contact the second author, David Valentiner (dvalentiner@niu.edu) for access to the data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, 60115, USA

    Anna E. Martinez-Snyder, David P. Valentiner & Cassandra R. Mick

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  1. Anna E. Martinez-Snyder
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  2. David P. Valentiner
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  3. Cassandra R. Mick
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Contributions

AMS and DV made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, and to the analysis and interpretation of data. AMS acquired the data. AMS, DV, and CM drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; approved the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

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Correspondence to David P. Valentiner.

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These data were collected as part of an educational module. They were subsequently deidentified and made available to the researchers for secondary analysis. Because the research involved the analysis of existing data, it was exempt from review by the authors’ institution’s Institutional Review Board.

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This study was conducted as a doctoral dissertation of the first author under the supervision of the second author. An earlier version of the analyses was presented at the 57th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in Seattle.

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Martinez-Snyder, A.E., Valentiner, D.P. & Mick, C.R. Measures of Anxiety Disorder Symptoms in Adolescents. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-023-01618-6

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