ARE CHILDREN ABLE TO DESCRIBE THEIR ANXIE TIES - AN INTERVIEW STUDY

Many studies on the anxiety of children are based on the judgement of others, and next to the reports of parents, those of nursery school te achers and teachers are the main sources. Young children are rarely di rectly questioned because of psychometric problems (little consistency of children's judgement). Thus, the way of data collection used in th e present study is unusual with small children: they were allowed to s peak for themselves. 128 pre-school children (4;5-6;9) were interviewe d and they reported about their preferences, desires, fears, anxieties and about their relationship with their playmates. The children's sel f-descriptions, resulting from the interviews, were correlated with th e anxiety score values of a behavioral study and with the judgements o f the nursery school teachers and the reports of their mothers. The pr esent study could show a considerable correspondence between the child ren's self-description, the behavioral study and the nursery school te achers' judgement. This result is a further argument in favour of the standardized interview being indeed an additional possibility to get m ore information about the extent and the nature of older pre-school ch ildren's anxieties.