Penn State Worry Questionnaire – Children (PSWQ-C)

“My worries really bother me”
“I don’t really worry about things.” [negatively scored]
“I know I shouldn’t worry but I just can’t help it.”

Respondents are asked to rate how often each item applies to them by choosing from a 4-point Likert scale consisting of never (0), sometimes (1), often (2) and always (3). The scores from each item are summed together to yield a total score that ranges from 0-42, with higher scores reflecting higher levels of worry (Chorpita et al., 1997).

The PSWQ-C has shown sound psychometric properties in both community samples (Chorpita et al., 1997; Muris, Messters & Gobel, 2001) and clinical samples (Chorpita et al., 1997; Pestle, Chorpita & Schiffman, 2008). PSWQ-C has also been found to have good internal reliability, with Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from .89 (Chorpita et al., 1996) to .91 (Pestle, Chorpita & Schiffman, 2008) for community samples and a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .82 for a large clinical sample (Muris, Messters & Gobel, 2001) (Table 1). In both community and clinical samples, the PSWQ-C has shown high convergent validity with other assessment measurements for worry including the worry/oversensitive measure of the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) (Chorpita et al., 1997), Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) (Chorpita et al., 1997) and the revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) (Pestle, Chorpita & Schiffman, 2008). The PSWQ-C has also demonstrated favourable test-retest reliability; re-test after 1 and 3 weeks test-retest correlation coefficient of r=.92 (Chorpita et al., 1997), r = .83 (Kang, Shin & Song, 2010) respectively. Finally, the PSWQ-C has demonstrated to be valid in cross cultural populations, yielding good psychometric properties in community samples in France (Gosselin, Trembley, Dugas & Ladouceur, 2002) Denmark (Esbjørn, Reinholdt-DunneCaspersen, Christensen, & Chorpita, 2013) and Korea (Kang, Shin & Song, 2010).

The PSWQ-C is available to for research and professional use and can be found online: http://www.childfirst.ucla.edu/Resources.html. The PSWQ-C manual which includes rating scales, scoring instructions and norm tables can be obtained free of charge, by contacting Bruce F. Chorpita.

References

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Chorpita, B. F., Tracey, S. A., Brown, T. A., Collica, T. J., & Barlow, D. H. (1997). Assessment of worry in children and adolescents: An adaptation of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35(6), 569-581.[/perfectpullquote]

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Esbjørn, B. H., Reinholdt-Dunne, M. L., Caspersen, I. D., Christensen, L. B., & Chorpita, B. F. (2013). Penn State Worry Questionnaire: Findings form normative and clinical samples in Denmark. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 35(1), 113-122. doi: 10.1037/h0086923[/perfectpullquote]

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Gosselin, P., Tremblay, M., Dugas, M. J., & Ladouceur, R. (2002). Les inquiétudes chez les adolescents: Propriétés psychométriques de la version français du Penn State Worry Questionnaire for Children. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 43(4), 270. doi:10.1037/h0086923[/perfectpullquote]

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Kang, S. G., Shin, J. H., & Song, S. W. (2010). Reliability and validity of the Korean version of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire in primary school children. Journal of Korean medical science, 25(8), 1210-1216. doi:10.3346/jkms.2010.25.8.1210[/perfectpullquote]

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Muris, P., Meesters, C., & Gobel, M. (2001). Reliability, validity, and normative data of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire in 8–12-yr-old children. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 32(2), 63-72.[/perfectpullquote]

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Pestle, S. L., Chorpita, B. F., & Schiffman, J. (2008). Psychometric properties of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire for children in a large clinical sample. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 37(2), 465-471. doi:10.1080/15374410801955896[/perfectpullquote]