Structure of anxiety symptoms in urban children: Competing factor models of the revised children's manifest anxiety scale

The Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS; C. R. Reynolds & B. O . Richmond, 1985) is among the most widely used self-report measures of chi ldren's anxiety. The authors compared its current empirically derived facto r structure with theory-driven models derived from 8 experts on child anxie ty using concept mapping. Confirmatory factor analyses compared models usin g data from 898 seventh graders in an urban public school system serving a high percentage of African Americans. The most parsimonious best-fitting mo del was an expert-derived model with factors reflecting anxious arousal, so cial evaluation-oversensitivity, worry, and a higher order factor. This mod el was theoretically meaningful, excluded items less relevant to anxiety, a nd was invariant across gender. Future research with the RCMAS should consi der use of these dimensions. The combination of qualitative and quantitativ e methodology used in this study appeared to have considerable utility for refining measures.