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Initial Validation of the Children’s Worry Management Scale

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Abstract

We investigated the psychometric properties of a new instrument, the Children’s Worry Management Scale (CWMS). The CWMS has three subscales that specify methods of regulating worry: inhibition (the suppression of worry), dysregulation (exaggerated displays of worry), and coping (constructive ways of managing worry). Using a Caucasian, middle-class sample of 214 children (M = 9 years, 1 month), Study 1 provides reliability and validity data through patterns of correlations to parent- and child-completed measures of emotion management and behavioral problems. Internal consistencies range from .69 to .74. Study 2 establishes discriminant validity by demonstrating that the CWMS Dysregulation and Coping subscales differentiated, in the expected directions, between a group of children (n = 27) with DSM-IV anxiety diagnoses and a control group of children with no psychological disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA, 23187-8795, USA

    Janice Lillian Zeman

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

    Michael Cassano

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Cynthia Suveg

  4. University of Denver, School of Medicine, Denver, CO, USA

    Kimberly Shipman

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  1. Janice Lillian Zeman
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Correspondence to Janice Lillian Zeman.

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Zeman, J.L., Cassano, M., Suveg, C. et al. Initial Validation of the Children’s Worry Management Scale. J Child Fam Stud 19, 381–392 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-009-9308-4

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