Development of a novel observational measure for anxiety in young children: The Anxiety Dimensional Observation Scale.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Identifying anxiety disorders in preschool-age children represents an important clinical challenge. Observation is essential to clinical assessment and can help differentiate normative variation from clinically significant anxiety. Yet, most anxiety assessment methods for young children rely on parent-reports. The goal of this article is to present and preliminarily test the reliability and validity of a novel observational paradigm for assessing a range of fearful and anxious behaviors in young children, the Anxiety Dimensional Observation Schedule (Anx-DOS).

Methods

A diverse sample of 403 children, aged 3 to 6 years, and their mothers was studied. Reliability and validity in relation to parent reports (Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment) and known risk factor

SUBMITTER: Mian ND 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4532614 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature