Psychometric Properties of Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale in Nigerian Primary Schools: Implication for Community Development
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61841/wtjxqd33Keywords:
Community development, Psychometric properties, Spence children’s anxiety scale, Nigerian primary schoolsAbstract
This study sought the psychometric properties of Spence children’s anxiety scale in Nigerian primary schools in terms of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. A sample of 252 pupils randomly sampled in primary schools in Enugu state Nigeria was used for the study. Spence children’s anxiety scale (SCAS) was adopted and validated. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation was used for the determination of the factors of the SCAS. After that, the extracted factors were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis to determine the model fit for the data using International Business Machines, Statistical Package for Social Sciences, Analysis of a Moment Structures (IBM SPSS AMOS). The analysis showed that the items of the subscales of SCAS had good internal consistency reliability indices with an overall reliability index of 0.890 and an estimate of the temporal stability of 0.943. The data also had a good model fit with confirmatory factor index (CFI) of 0.980 and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of 0.039. SCAS is a reliable instrument that can be used to identify signs of academic anxiety among children in schools. This finding implicates community development of the children in the sense that when the children’s experience of anxietyare properly handled using the SCAS, they will better contribute to the development of their communities when they come of age.
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