PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF FEAR SURVEY SCHEDULE FOR CHILDREN REVISED (FSSC-R) URDU VERSION

Abstract

The present study aims to examine the psychometric properties of the Urdu version of The Fear Survey Schedule for Children- Revised, the FSSC-R-UR, (FSSC-R; Ollendick, 1983) in a community sample from Islamabad, and Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The Sample of Boys and Girls (N= 328) with the age range 12 to 18 years, was taken from schools and colleges of twin cities. The FSSC-R showed excellent reliability (α= 0.95) and was capable of assessing gender and age differences in youths’ fears that have also been documented in previous research. Further, the convergent validity of the scale was good as shown by substantial and meaningful correlations with the theoretically related measures. Support was also found for the discriminant validity of the scale as shown by low correlation with psychometrically and theoretically distinct measures. The author used exploratory as well as confirmatory factor analyses to determine the factor structure of the FSSCR-Urdu Version. The results yielded support for the Short Form of 25-item, five-factor model which provided a satisfactory fit for the structure of the FSSC- R Urdu Version. These five factors represent fears in the domains of Fear of failure and criticism (factor 1), Fear of the unknown (factor 2), Fear of Animals (factor 3), Fear of danger and death (factor 4) and Medical fears (factor 5). The scale also has a sensitivity of 73.1% and 54.9% specificity at a cutoff score of 137. The study also reported most common fears in the sample which were very similar to those reported by other studies i.e. fears in the domain of injury or harm. Altogether, these findings indicate that the FSSC-R-UR is a brief, reliable, and valid scale for assessing level of fearfulness and fear sensitivities in children and adolescents.