The Validity and Reliability of the Reading Anxiety Test (RAT) for Children and Adolescents

There is a dearth of publicly available standardized and normed reading anxiety tests (RATs) with known psychometric properties. In this study, we collected self-report data (n = 416), parent-report data (n = 455), or both (n = 184), for primary (n = 498) and secondary students (n = 473) for four RATs plus the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-25 (RCADS-25) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Analyses revealed that 21 items for each RAT loaded on three factors (generalized, social, and physiological reading anxiety), which had good internal consistency (.85 to .98) and interrater reliability (.82 to .90). Further, RAT scores correlated more closely with RCADS-25 anxiety scores (r = .54; convergent validity) than RCADS-25 depression scores, SDQ prosocial behavior, conduct problems, and peer problems scores (rs = -.03 to -.41; discriminant validity). We therefore calculated norms for each RAT, which are freely available on motif.org.au.