Child / Adolescent - Anxiety
Latent Profiles of Preschool Anxiety and Social-Emotional and Behavioral Skills in Young Children in Head Start and Title I Classrooms: Implications for Screening and Assessment
Rinatte L. Gruen, M.S.
Graduate Student
University of Miami
Miami, Florida
Jhonelle Bailey, M.S.
Graduate Student
University of Miami
Miami, Florida
Jill Ehrenreich-May, Ph.D.
Professor
University of Miami
Coral Gables, Florida
Rebecca Bulotsky Shearer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
University of Miami
Miami, Florida
Anxiety disorders in early childhood are prevalent and associated with concurrent and long-term social-emotional and academic difficulties. However, limited research has examined the different patterns of anxiety symptoms among preschool-aged children, owing to the dearth of reliable and valid measures of anxiety-related constructs in younger children. The present study aimed to identify profiles of early childhood anxiety in a sample of preschool children (N = 634 children, N = 9 schools) from predominantly low-income and minority backgrounds. Children were assessed using the Teacher Preschool Anxiety Scale (T-PAS), a teacher-report questionnaire of preschool anxiety symptoms, as a part of a multi-year, school-based implementation study of a social-emotional learning program. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify patterns of anxiety using the subscales of the T-PAS at the beginning of the academic year. Three profiles emerged: Low Overall Anxiety (83.91%, n = 532), High Social Anxiety/Moderate Separation Anxiety (8.68%, n = 55), and High Overall Anxiety (7.42%, n = 47). We assessed associations between children’s demographic variables and membership in each profile group. Children in the High Social Anxiety/Moderate Separation Anxiety group were younger than those in the Low Overall Anxiety group, and children in the High Overall Anxiety group were more likely to have individualized education programs (IEPs) than children in the other groups. There were no sex differences between groups. Additionally, we examined mean differences in classroom behavioral adjustment, self-regulation skills, and learning behaviors at the end of the preschool year across profile groups identified at the beginning of the year. Children in both elevated anxiety groups showed more underactive classroom behaviors than those in the Low Overall Anxiety group. There were no significant differences in self-regulation across profiles. Children in the High Overall Anxiety group scored lower on approaches to learning than children in both of the other groups, with children in the High Social Anxiety/Moderate Separation Anxiety group also scoring lower on competence motivation than children in the Low Overall Anxiety group. To the authors’ knowledge, this was the first study to conduct a profile analysis of anxiety using the T-PAS. Furthermore, findings extend prior understanding of preschool children’s anxiety, as reported by teachers, and can inform early childhood program needs for early identification and intervention practices. This study used a community-based sample within schools, which enabled us to include a broader, more representative sample than a clinic-referred sample. However, we identified a low rate of elevated endorsement of items by teachers, suggesting the T-PAS may benefit from further adaptations to ensure items include situations that occur regularly within the preschool setting. Additionally, rather than using the T-PAS for broad screening, the measure may be better utilized within clinical samples of young children as a tool targeting a subset of children who are flagged with emotional difficulties in order to gain more detailed information from the teachers’ perspectives about anxiety symptom clusters.