Page 9 - ICGE VII - ABSTRACT BOOK

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL EDUCATION VIII
“Visioning the Future of Education”

DO CHILDREN EXPERIENCE ANXIETY? ASSESSING ANXIETY
RELATED DISORDER AMONG UPPER PRIMARY LEVEL SCHOOL
CHILDREN

Charles Ganaprakasam, Samita Karunaharan, Syeda Humayra

(ganaprakasamcharles@gmail.com)

Abstract

Mental health is a vital element of a child’s overall wellbeing. However, research
periodically documents the issue of mental health among adolescents.
Purpose: Therefore, the present paper aimed to assess children’s anxiety disorder and
examine the reliability and factorial structure of Screen for Child Anxiety Disorders
(SCARED) instruments. Furthermore, the study also examined the association
between demographic elements and child anxiety disorder. Method: A cross-sectional
study consisting (n=441) children recruited using a convenience sampling method,
completed the SCARED instrument. Reliability analysis revealed 0.884, which
suggests that the instrument utilized in this study is highly reliable. Result: Findings
revealed that more than half of the respondents (67%) indicated the presence of
Anxiety Disorder. The factorial analysis demonstrated that the five-factor structure
model of the SCARED was also suitable for this population with a total of 37.7% of
variances. A significant association was found between age, gender, and
socioeconomic status with different types of anxiety disorder among
children. Conclusion: Findings suggests that the SCARED instrument would be useful
to identify the presence of various types of anxiety disorders among Malaysian
children.

Keywords: Screen for Child Anxiety Disorder (SCARED), Factorial Structure,
Children, Malaysia

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