Prr.wn & lndi!rd 01/f:. Vol. 2. pp II3 10 117. 1981 0191.8869,X1 020113-0550200 0 Prtnted I” Great Brlfain All nghts raened CopyrIght 0 1981 Pergamon Pre\\ Lrd

FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE STATE-TRAIT ANXIETY INVENTORY FOR CHILDREN

DARWIN DORR

Highland Hospital, Duke University Medical Center, P.O. Box 1101, Asheville. North Carolina 28802. U.S.A.

(Receiced 21 July 1980)

Summary-The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children was administered to 644 children in grades 4, 5 and 6. The intercorrelations among the 40 STAIC items were subjected to a principal components analysis using unities in the diagonals. Orthogonal rotations were then performed via the Varimax procedure. Examination of the 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 factor rotations indicated that the three factor solution was best in terms of simple structure and psychological meaning. The three factors that emerged were: Trait Anxiety. State Anxiety Present, and State Anxiety Absent.

THE FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE STATE-TRAIT ANXIETY INVENTORY FOR CHILDREN

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) (Spielberger et al., 1973) was constructed for the measurement of anxiety in 9-12 year old children. Patterned after the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (Spielberger et al., 1970), the STAIC consists of

separate self-report scales for measuring two distinctive anxiety concepts, state and trait anxiety (Spielberger, 1966, 1972). Although developed primarily as a research tool, the STAIC has been used in a variety of research endeavors (e.g., Dorr et al., 1980; Edwards, 1971) albeit its use is not yet as extensive as the STAI.

The STAIC A-State items are similar to the STAI items in that half of the items indicate the presence of anxiety; e.g. ‘I feel. . . very upset.. . upset.. . calm.. . not calm’

and the remaining 10 items reflect the absence of anxiety; e.g. ‘I feel. . . very calm . . calm.. . not calm’. In contrast to the STAI, the children’s A-Trait items are not ‘direction- alized;’ all but one of the STAIC items describe the presence of anxiety.

Spielberger et ul. (1980) reviewed the existing studies of the factor structure of the STAI and concluded that there was considerable support for the state-trait distinction. Ad- ditionally, these authors suggested that ‘anxiety present’ and ‘anxiety absent’ items may be tapping different sources of variance.

Because the STAIC A-Trait items are not directionalized (as are STAI A-Trait items), a

factor analysis of the STAIC would be likely to yield three major factors: A-Trait, A-State anxiety present, and A-State anxiety absent. Only one study of the factor structure

of the STAIC has been published. Gaudry and Poole (1975) administered the STAIC to 8th grade children in 24 classes in an Australian metropolitan area. The data were analyzed via principal components analysis and Varimax rotations. The Varimax factors were further subjected to oblique rotation, using oblique Promax factors. With eigen- values greater than 1.00 as the criterion for determining the number of factors to be extracted, 11 first order and two second order factors were identified. While the first order factors were difficult to interpret, the second order solution s

i”. ggested the presence

of two basic vectors that reflected the state-trait distinction. Additionally, Gaudry and Poole noted that several A-State anxiety-absent items were ‘less stable,’ i.e. varied some- what independently from the anxiety-present items, Hence, while the Gaudry and Poole analysis did not confirm the presence of three major vectors within STAIC, their obser- vations did not rule out this possibility.

The Gaudry and Poole statistical solution was rather complex and lacked parsimony.

Moreover, it was based on adolescent subjects. While the age effectiveness of STAIC is broad, it is considered most appropriate for children in grades four through six. Further- more, Gaudry and Poole’s subjects were Australian, and the STAIC was normed on a

113

114 DARWIN DORR

Table 1. Demographics,’

Demographic index Community A

0, 10

Community B

%

Income < $5000 13 Income $500@15,000 59 Income > $15,000 21 Education < 8 years 8 Education 8-12 years 31 Education High School Graduate 36 Education > High School 24

1

7; 23

4 26 47 22

* Based on responses of heads of household.

U.S.A. sample. Therefore, a further study of the factor structure of the STAIC with American children seemed essential. The present study examined the factor structure of the STAIC using more parsimonious factor analytic procedures and an American sample.

METHOD AND RESULTS

The sample was comprised of 203 4th graders, 207 5th graders, and 234 6th graders from three schools in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Two schools (kindergarten through 4th grade and 5th through 8th grade) were located in Community A; one school (kindergarten through 6th grade) was tested in Community B. The demographic charac- teristics of the two communities for families of 6th graders in Communities A and B are

summarized in Table 1. The two communities provided us with a relatively hetero- geneous sample.

Pearson product-moment correlations were computed for the 40 STAIC items, and the resulting matrix was subjected to a principal components analysis, followed by orth- ogonal Varimax rotations (unities were used in the leading diagonal). To maximize the ratio of subjects to variables the data for 4th, 5th and 6th graders were pooled. Factor analyses were carried out for the total sample and for boys and girls separately as previous research findings have suggested sex differences in STAIC scores (Spielberger et al., 1980).

Means, standard deviations, and alpha reliability coefficients computed by Kuder- Richardson Formula 20 are reported in Table 2. These results accord very closely with those reported by Spielberger et ul. (1973) suggesting that our data are generally similar to the original STAIC normative sample.

The eigenvalues for each successive principal components factor were determined for the total sample. Nine eigenvalues were greater than one, the first three being 8.61, 3.30 and 2.31. similar results were found when boys’ and girls’ results were analyzed separ- ately.

The scree/breaks criterion (Vagg er al., 1980) suggested rotation of three factors. How- ever, in order to ensure that no meaningful solution was overlooked, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 factor solutions were determined for the total sample, and separately for boys and girls.

The two factor solutions for boys, girls, and total sample clearly supported the state- trait distinction. However, the three factor rotation, reported in Table 3, appeared to be most satisfying in terms of psychological meaning, parsimony, and simple structure.

Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and alpha reliability for the STAIC

STAIC A-State scale STAIC A-Trait scale All subjects Males Females All subjects Males Females

N 644 319 325 N 644 319 325 Mean 30.34 30.74 29.95 Mean 37.18 36.78 37.58 SD 6.63 6.71 6.52 SD 7.15 7.14 7.14 KR 20x 0.84 0.84 0.85 KR 20a 0.84 0.80 0.81

STAIC factor structure 115

For both boys and girls, 17 of the 20 trait items clustered unambiguously on a single factor which was labeled ‘Trait Anxiety’. The loadings for A-Trait items 8 (I am shy), 13 (I notice my heart beats fast), and 16 (My hands get sweaty) were less than 0.40 on this factor. In the boys’ sample, item 15 (I worry about my parents) failed to load at least 0.40 on Factor 1. Two of the 4 trait items that failed to load on the trait anxiety factor were ‘physiological’ items.

In the total sample the 10 A-State anxiety present items (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 15, 16, 18 and 19) loaded greater than 0.40 on a factor on which no other items loaded robustly. This pattern was duplicated in the boys’ sample as it was in the girls’ sample, one exception being a loading of less than 0.40 (0.37) by item 5. This factor was labeled State Anxiety Present.

Table 3. Factor loadings for the state-trait anxiety inventory for children”

Factor I Factor II Factor III STAIC (Trait anxiety) (State anxiety present) (State anxiety absent) A-State

Items Abbreviations Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Calm Upset Pleasant Nervous Jittery Rested Scared Relaxed Worried Satisfied Frightened

Happy Sure Good Troubled Bothered Nice Terrified Mixed-up Cheerful

65 46

61 64

(371 48

72 57

68 70

78 72

63 49

66 64

54 47

51 57

(351

72

60

66

63

74 43 61

62

62 _

60

75 45 73

68 67

72 74

64

73

A-Trait Items Abbreviations Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys

1 Mistakes 55 48 2 Crying 48 42

3 Unhappy 45 44 4 Making up mind 40 61 5 Face problems 63 56 6 Worry 42 59 41 7 Upset home 44 53

8 Shy (251 (311 9 Troubled 56 55

10 Thoughts 59 56 11 Worry school 55 47 12 Deciding 47 51 13 Heart (351 (331 14 Afraid 58 48 15 Worry parents 48 (331 16 Hands I351 (331 17 Worry future 67 57 18 Asleep 47 44 19 Stomach 44 41 20 Worry others 44 52

I: “/;, Var. acct. for 12.9 12.5 12.2 9.7 11.8 12.9

a Decimals omitted. Actual order of factor appearance is revealed by percent variance accounted for. Columns were rearranged to ease interpretation. For items not loading greater than 0.40, highest loading is noted in parentheses. Percent variance accounted for after rotation.

116 DARWIN DORR

The 10 A-State anxiety absent items (1, 3,6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17 and 20) loaded greater than 0.40 on a factor on which no other items loaded robustly. This same pattern was observed when the boys’ data were analyzed separately. The girls’ analyses were virtually identical excepting item 1 which had a loading of only 0.35. This factor was labeled State Anxiety Absent.

In the four factor solution for the total sample, item 8 (I am shy) loaded 0.58 on a fourth factor on which no other items had salient loadings (0.40 or higher). In the girls’

sample, however, this item had no salient loadings, but A-Trait items 1 and 5, ‘I worry about making mistakes’ and ‘It is difficult for me to face my problems,’ had loadings of 0.40 or greater on two factors thus violating the principle of simple structure. In the four factor solution for the boys’ data, 10 A-Trait items had loadings greater than 0.40 on one factor and 7 loaded greater than 0.40 on another, but the psychological meaning of this pattern was unclear. Rotation of five and six factors failed to produce satisfactory sol- utions in terms of either simple structure or psychological meaningfulness.*

DISCUSSION

In the factor analysis of the STAIC in the present study, the two factor solution supported the state-trait dichotomy. However, the three factor solution, which clearly demonstrated that the STAIC A-State anxiety absent and anxiety present items defined two different factors, appeared to be more psychologically meaningful, had better simple structure, and was more parsimonious than the other solutions. The rotation of ad- ditional factors identified unstable factors defined by singlets and doublets, and tended to

result in the violation of simple structure. The anxiety present and anxiety absent A-State factors identified in the present study

were similar to anxiety present and anxiety absent dimensions found in the STAI by Spielberger et al. (1980). The results of the present study are also consistent with Gaudry and Poole’s observation that the STAIC anxiety absent and anxiety present items may

vary independently. Gaudry and Poole speculated that feelings of well-being are more labile than the more

traditional (negative) signs of anxiety. A not dissimilar but alternative interpretation is that perhaps the anxiety absent items measure a health dimension that lies beyond mere absence of problems. Hollister (1965) has noted that psychologists have been relatively

successful in measuring ‘illness,’ but they generally have been very inactive in the measuring of health. While presence of anxiety is not necessarily a negative sign (anxiety may motivate positive growth), the items loading strongly on Factor III (see Table 3) ‘I

feel very happy,’ ‘I feel very sure, ’ ‘I feel very good,’ and ‘I feel very nice,’ may reflect positive psychological qualities that relate to but are functionally independent of anxiety. Future research on the psychometric properties and psychological meaningfulness of this recurrent anxiety-absent factor may broaden our understanding of the evolving nature of

personality.

Acknowledgements-Mrs Bertie Phillips, Mr Bill Klodt, and Mr Ed Hamlin assisted in the preparation of this manuscript. I am indebted to Dr Charles Spielberger and Dr Peter Vagg for their helpful criticism of the analysis and interpretation of the data:

REFERENCES

DORR D., STEPHENS J., POZNER R. and KLODT W. (1980) Use of the AML scale to identify adjustment problems in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children. Am. J. Commun. Psycho/. 8, 341-352.

EDWARDS C. D. (1971) Vulnerability to stress: A study of anxiety and self-concept in black and white elementar) school children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation in preparation. Florida State University.

GAUDRY E. and POOLE C. A. (1975) A further validation of the state-trait distinction in anxiety research. Aus. J. Psycho/. 27, 119-125.

HOLLISTER W. G. (1965) The concept of ‘strens’ in preventive interventions and ego-strength building in the schools. In The Protection and Promotion of Mental Health in Schools. (Edited by LAMBERT N. M.), pp. 3&35. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of H.E.W., Public Health Service Public. No. 1226.

* The factor data for the 6, 5, 4 and 2 factor solutions may be obtained by writing to the author.

STAIC factor structure 117

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SPIELBERGER C. D., EDWARDS C. D., LUSHENE R. E., MONTUORI J. and PLATZEK D. (1973) Preliminury Tesf Manualfor the State-Trait Anxiety Znventoryfor Children. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA.

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SPIELBERGER C. D., VAGG P. R., BARKER L. R., DONHAM G. W. and WESTBERRY L. G. (1980) The factor structure of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. In Stress und Anxiery, Vol. 7 (Edited by SARASON I. G. and SPIELBERGER C. D.). Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, Washington, D.C.

VAGC P. R., SPIELBERGER C. D. and O’HEARN T. P. (1980) Is the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory multidimen- sional? Person. Ind. DisJ: 1, 207-214.