Abstract

OLIVEIRA, Sandra Maria da Silva Sales  and  SISTO, Fermino Fernandes. A study for a child scale of school anxiety. Psicol. esc. educ. [online]. 2002, vol.6, n.1, pp. 57-66. ISSN 1413-8557.

This study aimed to construct an instrument to evaluate the anxiety at school. 221 students were subjected to this research, 104 boys and 117 girls, aged between 9 and 12 years old, from the third and fourth grade of elementary school. The instrument was composed of 53 sentences in scale form and, in a previous study, factorial analysis put the items together in 18 factors. In a following study, factorial analysis corroborated the organization of sub-scales in four factors. Some items with saturation less than 0.40 were eliminated and the final scale was composed of 38 items. The factor 1 refers to generic fear, factor 2 refers to satisfaction, factor 3 refers to avoidance and factor 4 refers to evaluative situations related to fear. From the four sub-scale, the one which showed lower reliability was the factor 2 with an alpha coefficient of 0,66 and the one which presented higher reliability was the factor 1 with an alpha coefficient of 0,87. The internal consistence of the general scale was 0,83, indicating a very satisfactory level.

Keywords : Anxiety; Assessment; Elementary school.