Manifest anxiety and fearfulness in children and adolescents

The relationship between self-reported fear and anxiety was examined in a large sample of normal Australian children and adolescents. Participants completed the Fear Survey Schedule for Children--Revised (Ollendick, 1983) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (Reynolds & Richmond, 1978). Following an examination of the internal consistency of these instruments, correlational analyses were conducted on anxiety and fear scores. Fear scores were shown to be sensitive to anxiety, sex, and age groups. Furthermore, discriminant analysis showed that high-anxiety children indicated a greater fear of items related to failure and criticism than did low-anxiety children. Other issues, including the content overlap between the two scales used in the investigation, are discussed.