Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Anxiety--Sex factors; College students--Psychological testing; Worry;
Abstract
The construct of worry has captured the attention of researchers in recent years and has been implicated in several psychological disorders. Initially, the lack of validated instruments hampered the study of the worry construct. Several such instruments have been developed in recent years, but two instruments have predominated in the literature concerning the construct of worry-the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990) and the Worry Domains Questionnaire (Tallis, Eysenck, & Mathews, 1992). While both appear psychometrically sound, these instruments focused on different and distinct aspects of the worry construct. Some researchers (Davey, 1993; Starcevic, 1995; Tallis et al., 1992) have suggested that an instrument combining frequency, intensity, and content components would further the study and assessment of worry. In response to the limitations of existing content-based worry measures and the need for a multidimensional instrument, Osman et al. (2001) developed the Student Worry Questionnaire-30 (SWQ-30; Osman et al., 2001), an instrument relevant for use with college students. The SWQ-30 assesses the act of worrying, that is, the frequency and intensity, the specific content, and the physiological symptoms of worry. This study replicated the work of Osman and his colleagues and examined the psychometric properties and the factor structure of the SWQ-30. This study extended the previous validation efforts by examining the psychometric properties of the SWQ-30 after separating the sample by gender and by reporting the magnitude of any gender differences. The results of this study showed that the SWQ-30 contained six distinct factors and that the instrument demonstrates high internal consistency for the entire sample and for separate male and female subsamples. Controlling for state anxiety had almost no impact on the correlations between the SWQ-30 total and scale scores and other worry measures, whereas controlling for trait anxiety markedly diminished those correlations. These findings suggested that the SWQ-30 tapped the trait of worry. Finally, this study found that females scored significantly higher than males on total SWQ-30 scores and on the Worrisome Thinking, Academic Concerns, and General Anxiety subscales. Gender differences on the Significant Others' Well-being subscale fell short of statistical significance. The magnitude of the gender differences ranged from small to moderate effect sizes.
Year of Submission
2002
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Psychology
First Advisor
Augustine Osman
Second Advisor
Beverly Kopper
Third Advisor
Andrew Gilpin
Date Original
2002
Object Description
1 PDF file (114 leaves)
Copyright
©2002 Janet A. Carter
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Carter, Janet A., "The Student Worry Questionnaire-30: Further Examination of Gender Differences" (2002). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2309.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2309
Comments
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