The authors examined the cultural validity of Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC-AM) developed by J. J. Burnham (2005) with Turkish children. The relationships between demographic variables and the level of fear were also tested. Three independent data sets were used. The first data set comprised 676 participants (321 women and 355 men) and was used for examining factor structure and internal reliability of FSSC. The second data set comprised 639 participants (321 women and 318 men) and was used for testing internal reliability and to confirm the factor structure of FSCC. The third data set comprised 355 participants (173 women and 182 men) and used for analyses of test-retest reliability, inter-item reliability, and convergent validity for the scores of FSSC. The sum of the first and second samples (1,315 participants; 642 women and 673 men) was used for testing the relationships between demographic variables and the level of fear. Results indicated that FSSC is a valid and reliable instrument to examine Turkish children's and adolescents' fears between the ages of 8 and 18 years. The younger, female, children of low-income parents reported a higher level of fear. The findings are discussed in light of the existing literature.
The present study aimed to investigate the common fears and their origins among children and adolescents from different age, gender, and socioeconomic levels (SES). The sample was comprised of 642 females (48.8%) and 673 males (51.2%) with a total of 1,315 participants aged between 8 and 18 (M = 13.15; SD = 3.18). The Fear interview was utilised to examine the common fears and the role of conditioning, modelling and negative information in the development of children's fears. The result showed that the most common fear in Turkey was ‘God’, followed by ‘losing my friends’ and ‘going to Hell’. In addition, the findings revealed that Turkish students are more likely to learn fears by modelling rather than negative information transmission and conditioning. The results also indicated that negative information transmission had a more intensifying effect on the children and adolescents’ existing fear rather than modelling and conditioning. Furthermore, multinomial logistic regression was conducted to examine the effects of age, gender and SES on the origins of fear. Results showed that age and gender were significant predictors of origins of fear.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.