FAMILY WORRIES - ASSESSMENT OF INTERPERSONAL ANXIETY IN CHILDREN FROMVIOLENT AND NONVIOLENT FAMILIES

Assessed children's worries about the behaviors of significant people in the family with a new measure that focused on both the target of th e worry and the types of behavior that worry the child. One hundred tw enty-one 7 to 12-year-old in families with and without domestic violen ce rated, on a 4-point scale ranging form 1 (not a lot) to 4 (a lot) h ow much they worried about 20 behaviors concerning five people in the family: mother, father, brother, sister, and self. Varimax analyses pr ovided two factors - Vulnerable and Harmful - that indicate worry abou t the vulnerable and harmful behavior of each family member. The measu re has acceptable internal and test-retest reliability, as well as kno wn-groups validity. Children in the domestic violence families were si gnificantly more worried about the vulnerability of their mothers, bro thers, and sisters, and they tended to worry more about the harmful be havior of their fathers than did children in the comparison group. Sig nificant associations were found, for the children of battered women, between child adjustment and worry about the harmful behavior of famil y members.