The Preschool Anxiety Scale (PAS) is a parent-report scale measuring young children's anxiety symptoms involving five specific anxiety symptoms (separation anxiety, physical injury fears, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety) that load on a higher-order factor representing general anxiety shared by all specific anxiety symptom subtypes. Although the PAS has been widely used to assess anxiety symptoms in young children, few studies have tested its measurement invariance for group comparisons. Using data from a sample of 2,221 children and their parents/carers in the United Kingdom, this study investigated the measurement invariance of the higher-order model of the PAS across child age (4-6 years vs. 6-7 years), gender (girls vs. boys), parental anxiety (low vs. high level), and children's living circumstances (before vs. after the removal of COVID-19 restrictions). Our findings demonstrated the good factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity of the higher-order model of the PAS in all subgroups and supported its configural, metric, and scalar invariance across these subgroups. Therefore, the findings suggest that the PAS is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing specific anxiety symptoms and general anxiety among young children in the United Kingdom and that comparisons can be made between the subgroups under examination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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英国学前焦虑量表（PAS）高阶模型在儿童年龄、性别、父母焦虑和大流行期间的测量不变性。


学前焦虑量表 (PAS) 是一种家长报告量表，用于测量幼儿的焦虑症状，涉及五种特定的焦虑症状（分离焦虑、身体伤害恐惧、社交恐惧症、强迫症、广泛性焦虑），这些症状会加重高阶因素代表所有特定焦虑症状亚型共有的一般性焦虑。尽管 PAS 已广泛用于评估幼儿的焦虑症状，但很少有研究测试其测量不变性以进行组间比较。本研究使用英国 2,221 名儿童及其父母/照顾者的样本数据，调查了 PAS 高阶模型在儿童年龄（4-6 岁与 6-7 岁）、性别之间的测量不变性（女孩与男孩）、父母焦虑（低水平与高水平）以及儿童的生活环境（取消 COVID-19 限制之前与之后）。我们的研究结果证明了所有子组中 PAS 高阶模型的良好因子结构、内部一致性和收敛有效性，并支持其在这些子组中的配置、度量和标量不变性。因此，研究结果表明，PAS 是评估英国幼儿特定焦虑症状和一般焦虑的可靠且有效的工具，并且可以在接受检查的亚组之间进行比较。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。