ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Previous research has indicated that parent cognition, including anxious beliefs and expectations, are associated with both parent and child anxiety symptoms and may be transferred from parent to child. However, the content and frequency of parent worry in relation to their children has yet to be examined as a potential form of anxious parent cognition, and little is known about normative parent worry. AIMS: The purpose of the current study is to extend the research on parent cognition and child anxiety by focusing on parent worry (i.e. parent worry in relation to their children) as a potential predictor of child anxiety. METHOD: A comprehensive self-report measure of parent worry was developed and administered to a community-based sample of parents. RESULTS: An exploratory factor analysis yielded a single factor solution. Parent worry was found to be a more robust predictor of child anxiety than parent anxiety symptoms, and parent worry mediated the association between parent anxiety symptoms and child anxiety. Most common worries reported by parents fell within the domains of life success and physical well-being. CONCLUSION: Overall, this study adds to the literature on parent cognitive biases and has the potential to inform parent-based interventions for the treatment of child anxiety. Further, this study provides initial data on normative parent worry.
Subject(s)
Anxiety/diagnosis , Anxiety/psychology , Culture , Parent-Child Relations , Parents/psychology , Adult , Child , Cross-Cultural Comparison , Female , Health Surveys , Humans , Imitative Behavior , Internal-External Control , Male , Psychometrics , Reinforcement, Psychology , Social Adjustment , Social Perception , Statistics as Topic , Surveys and Questionnaires , United Kingdom , United StatesABSTRACT
Academic buoyancy refers to a positive, constructive, and adaptive response to the types of challenges and setbacks experienced in a typical and everyday academic setting. In this project we examined whether academic buoyancy explained any additional variance in test anxiety over and above that explained by coping. Two hundred and ninety-eight students in their final two years of compulsory schooling completed self-report measures of academic buoyancy, coping, and test anxiety. Results suggested that buoyancy was inversely related to test anxiety and unrelated to coping. With the exception of test-irrelevant thoughts, test anxiety was positively related to avoidance coping and social support. Test-irrelevant thoughts were inversely related to task focus, unrelated to social support, and positively related to avoidance. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that academic buoyancy explained a significant additional proportion of variance in test anxiety when the variance for coping had already been accounted for. These findings suggest that academic buoyancy can be considered as a distinct construct from that of adaptive coping.
