http://jcc.sagepub.com/ Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/37/1/100 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0022022105282298 2006 37: 100 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology Anja Riitta Lahikainen, Inger Kraav, Tiina Kirmanen and Merle Taimalu Child-Parent Agreement in the Assessment of Young Children's Fears: A Comparative Perspective Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology can be found at: Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology Additional services and information for http://jcc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://jcc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/37/1/100.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Jan 13, 2006 Version of Record >> at Uni Lucian Blaga on April 8, 2014 jcc.sagepub.com Downloaded from at Uni Lucian Blaga on April 8, 2014 jcc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
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http://jcc.sagepub.com/Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/37/1/100The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0022022105282298
2006 37: 100Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyAnja Riitta Lahikainen, Inger Kraav, Tiina Kirmanen and Merle Taimalu
Child-Parent Agreement in the Assessment of Young Children's Fears: A Comparative Perspective
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology
can be found at:Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyAdditional services and information for
10.1177/0022022105282298JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGYLahikainen et al. / YOUNG CHILDREN’S FEARS
CHILD-PARENT AGREEMENT IN THEASSESSMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN’S FEARS
A Comparative Perspective
ANJA RIITTA LAHIKAINENUniversity of Tampere,
INGER KRAAVUniversity of Tartu
TIINA KIRMANENUniversity of Tampere
MERLE TAIMALUUniversity of Tartu
Finnish and Estonian parents’ assessments of their 5- to 6-year-old children’s fears (selected items of theOllendick Fear Survey Schedule) were compared with children’s self-reported fears in a semistructuredinterview that included a picture-aided section. Representative samples from Finland and Estonia consistedof 330 child-parent pairs. The level of agreement between the informants’assessments was low in both coun-tries. Children reported more fears than did their parents in comparable items. Parents in both countries seemto underestimate children’s fears. These findings suggest that children should be primary informants of theirfears. In addition, the same types of differences in children’s fears were revealed between the countries irre-spective of the informant. Finnish children expressed more fears related to issues of mental overexcitation;the fears of Estonian children more often concerned concrete people’s behavior.
This study compares parents’ assessments of their children’s fears with children’s self-reports in a normal population of 5- to 6-year-old children in Finland and in Estonia. Fearsare an important area through which the child constructs his or her relationship to the world.Despite the innate human capacity to experience and to express fears, fears are reinforced,repressed, socially represented, and culturally modified in social interaction (see Bowlby,1978; Ollendick, Yang, King, Dong, & Akande, 1996; Ollendick, Yule, & Ollier, 1991).When fears occur in excess, they may turn into obstacles to growth and development(Craske, 1997). In our evaluative research project, “Insecurity, Its Causes and Coping,” weare interested in studying children’s fears, worries, and psychosomatic symptoms as indica-tors of children’s well-being (Lahikainen, Kraav, Kirmanen, & Maijala, 1995). Rather thanlooking at fears as symptoms, we prefer to take them as indicators of development in a broadsense. This perspective has received far too little attention in child research (Slee & Cross,1989).
Although the influence of cultural factors in creating and modifying fears is widely rec-ognized (Ollendick et al., 1996), cultural comparative approaches have not been very com-mon in fear research. We have not found any comparative fear study on younger children.
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AUTHORS’ NOTE: We are grateful to the Academy of Finland and Estonian Foundation of Science for financial support for theresearch project.
Results concerning comparison of school-age children in different cultures suggest that theintensity and structure of fears tend to be similar in the Western world (King et al., 1989;Ollendick et al., 1996). However, differences have been found in the intensity and structureof fears between Chinese, Nigerian, and American/Australian school-age children(Ollendick et al., 1996), between Jewish and Bedouin school-age children (Elbedour,Shulman, & Kedem, 1997), and between Navajo and Anglo school-age children (Tikalsky &Wallace, 1988). Tentative hypotheses explaining cultural differences lie in different social-ization practices: Cultures favoring inhibition, compliance, and obedience serve to increaseintensity of fear (Gullone, 2000; Ollendick et al., 1996).
Information about the prevalence of fears in normal populations of young childrenremains quite scarce for various reasons (Ablow et al., 1999; Bauer, 1976; Lapouse &Monks, 1959; Lentz, 1985a, 1985b). First, young children are not as easily accessible asschoolchildren, and second, studies with young children require special methods. The onlystandardized method available for studying fears in young children is based on the Fear Sur-vey Schedule for Children–II (FSSC-II; Gullone & King, 1992), which has been modifiedfor parents by Bouldin and Pratt (1998). However, the age group on which Gullone and King(1992) based their measure development is older (from age 7 to 18) than our age group. Fearsare very common at an early age and therefore certainly deserve closer empirical and theoret-ical investigation (Elbedour et al., 1997).
In our study, we used both young children themselves and their parents as informants offear. A fear survey was designed for use with the parents, whereas a semistructured interviewincluding a picture-aided section was developed for the children. Both instruments weredesigned on the basis of the fear survey schedule developed by Ollendick and colleagues(Lahikainen et al., 1995; Lahikainen, Kirmanen, Kraav, & Taimalu, 2003; Ollendick, 1983;Ollendick, King, & Frary, 1989; Ollendick, Matson, & Helsel, 1985). The study was repli-cated in two countries, with analyses carried out to identify similarities and dissimilaritiesbetween the informants’ views.
Finland and Estonia are neighboring, comparatively small countries both in terms of theirsurface area and population numbers. The Estonian and Finnish people belong to the samegroup of Fenno-Ugric people, and their spoken languages are rather similar to each other.The most striking social and cultural differences between Finland and Estonia derive fromthe 50-year period from 1945 to 1991, when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. The chil-dren studied in Estonia have been brought up by parents who at least formally have abided bythe principles of socialist ideology. Finland is a Nordic welfare state, which enjoys a highstandard of living; Estonia is a postsocialist country with a liberal market economy and alower standard of living. Estonian children in our study have lived in a very unique time oftransition from the socialist regime to liberal market economy, with several complications intheir socialization: parental stress caused by reorganization of everyday life, new possibili-ties for change in values of education, and changes in social security. In comparison to Esto-nia, Finland has remained stable despite the economic decline of the 1990s. We assume thatthe rapid social change with concomitant increase of general insecurity in Estonia isreflected in children’s fears also (Hansson, 2000; Tiit & Ainsaar, 2000).
We compare the overall picture of children’s fears in these countries. In comparison, weseparately refer to the data collected from parents and then from children, which are thencompared. Given the indicators we have chosen to use in this project to describe well-being,we expect to find not only overlapping but also complementary pictures deriving from thechildren themselves and from their parents.
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We then proceed to explore differences observed between different fear items as raised byboth groups of informants. There our aim then is to find out how far children and parentsagree in their assessments of the presence of fears in normal populations in two cultures.
The purpose of the cultural comparison is twofold: First, we demonstrate the existence ofcultural variability in young children’s fears in societies of stability and instability using bothchildren and their parents as informants. Then, we try to test whether general results con-cerning agreement between a child and his or her parent are applicable to one culture only orwhether the phenomena studied have more general, cross-cultural validity, thus suggestingthat these phenomena have general and theoretical relevance, for example, that there are gen-eral expectations attached to parenthood, psychological factors connected to observation,and inner as well as outer recognition of fears.
Concerning agreement in fear reports, there are four previous studies. In a study byBondy, Sheslow, and Garcia (1985), children’s fears were assessed by the mother and thechild. Using the FSSC-II, the authors found a high correspondence in the ranking order offears, but the correlation of overall fearfulness was insignificant among boys. Among girls,the correlation was significant but lower than the correlation of mothers’ estimates of theirdaughters’ fears with the mothers’ fears. Muris, Merckelbach, Ollendick, King, and Bogie(2001) investigated nighttime fears in children aged 4 to 12 years. Children and their parentswere interviewed, for example, about the frequency and content of children’s nighttimefears. Results showed that parental reports substantially deviated from children’s reports,particularly in frequency of fears. Whereas 73.3% of the children reported nighttime fears,only 34.0% of the parents estimated that their children had such fears at all. DiBartolo,Albano, Barlow, and Heimberg (1998) examined cross-informant agreement between par-ent and child/adolescent with a principal diagnosis of social phobia (ADIS-C/-P). AnxietyDisorders Interview Schedule (ADIS-C/-P) was conducted separately for the parent and thechild in clinical setting. Although there was only a minor discrepancy between the mean rat-ings of parents and children concerning children’s social fears, the correlation between thescales was insignificant. Barrett et al. (1991) found that fears and phobias as symptoms ofdepression are more often reported by children only than by their parents (47% child only,22% parent only). All in all, the research evidence concerning the level of agreementbetween different informants on children’s fears remains sporadic. It also deals most oftenwith school-aged children and excludes younger children.
Questions of validity and reliability are an issue of special concern within child research(Ablow et al., 1999; Fundudis et al., 1991; Rapee, Barrett, Dadds, & Evans, 1994). Amongthe distinctive features attributed to child informants are their deficient linguistic, cognitive,and emotional and motivational competencies (e.g., short attention span; Breakwell, 1990;Measelle, Ablow, Cowan, & Cowan, 1998). On the other hand, it has also been argued thatfailure to consult children as informants is based on an underestimation of the child’s compe-tencies. The validity of information provided by parents has also been questioned (Barrettet al, 1991; Epkins & Meyers, 1994; Qvortrup, 1994).
Parents tend to fare better in reporting children’s externalizing problems, whereas theyunderreport internalizing problems (Edelbrock, Costello, Dulcan, Conover, & Kalas, 1986;Kolko & Kadzin, 1993; Rey, Schrader, & Morris-Yates, 1992; Thompson, Merritt, Keith,Murphy, & Johndrow, 1993). This has been explained by reference to different levels of tol-erance of symptoms in adults and children. The informant is likely to report symptoms thatbother him or her most. Consequently, the differences between the parent’s and the child’sreports reflect differences in their egocentric views about the severity of the symptom
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In several studies, children have reported more symptoms than did their parents (Bird,Gould, & Staghezza, 1992; Edelbrock et al., 1986). This difference has been attributed to thedesirability effect among parents. The differences in these assessments may be due to thecontext dependence of the child’s behavior (Begun, Gullo, & Modell, 1990) or to the infor-mants’ different opportunities to observe the child (Lambert, Thesinger, Overly, & Knight,1990).
Methodological problems are also highlighted by the low level of agreement betweeninformants in studies in which multiple informants are used (Ablow et al., 1999; Bird et al.,1992; Barrett et al., 1991; DiBartolo et al., 1998; Epkins & Meyers, 1994; Jensen et al., 1999;Loeber, Green, Lahey, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1989; Paavonen et al., 2000). Different infor-mants tend to give different information about the same child, regardless of the informantpair selection and the topic; see, for example, parent-teacher (Keogh & Bernheimer, 1998;Lambert et al., 1990), parent-child (Hodges, Gordon, & Lennon, 1990; Jensen et al., 1999;Rey et al., 1992; Schneider & Byrne, 1989; Thompson et al., 1993), symptoms (Barrett et al.,1991; Bird et al, 1992; Fundudis et al., 1991; Jensen et al., 1999; Lambert et al., 1990),behavioral traits (Epkins & Meyers, 1994), and competencies (Keogh & Bernheimer, 1998;Schneider & Byrne, 1989).
This article further addresses questions about methodological problems in childhoodstudies and adds on a comparative dimension. For this purpose, we have developed a detailedchild interview method, which is in concurrence with studies emphasizing the importance ofchildren as informants (Lahikainen et al., 2003).
The main hypotheses are as follows:
Hypothesis 1: Young children’s fears reflect the cultural context in which they live.Hypothesis 2: Young children’s and their parents’ low agreement in children’s fears is independent
of the culture.Hypothesis 3: Parents tend generally to underestimate the fears of their young children.
SAMPLES
Two representative random samples of children ages 5 to 6 living in Kuopio and theKuopio district in Finland (n = 240) and in Tartu and the Tartu district (n = 120) in Estoniawere gathered during 1993 and 1994. The towns and their neighboring districts are situatedin the geographical centers of both countries, and their relative distance from the capital isabout the same. Both Kuopio and Tartu are university towns. The names and the addresses of5- to 6-year-old citizens were randomly picked from the populations register. The final num-ber of parents in Finland was 222 and in Estonia, 117; the number of children was 214 in Fin-land and 116 in Estonia. The final number of child-parent pairs was 214 in Finland and 116 inEstonia. There were 108 (50.7%) girls and 106 (49.3%) boys in the Finnish sample and 61(53.0%) girls and 55 (47.0%) boys in the Estonian sample. The proportions of boys and girlsdid not differ significantly (χ2 = 0.30, ns). The mean ages were as follows: For Finnish chil-dren, there were 5.49 (SD = 0.50), and for Estonian children, there were 5.53 (SD = 0.50; t =2.2, p = .03). As an example of problems of comparison, socioeconomic status could not beaccounted for comparative purposes because of the differences in educational systems in theformer socialist Estonia and Finland.
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There were several reasons for nonresponse (see Table 1). The most common reasonswere that the families had moved or that incorrect contact information was obtained from theregister. Among the reasons quoted for refusal to participate, reference was made most fre-quently to lack of time, need to maintain privacy, excessive stress in family, and the child’sserious disability. In addition, four children refused to speak to the interviewer.
PROCEDURES
A letter was sent to inform the parents about the project. Thereafter, they were contactedby phone to make sure they were willing to take part and agreed to the child interview. Eitherthe mother, the father, or both together were allowed to complete the questionnaire for par-ents. Decisions on the location and time of the interview were made on the parents’ recom-mendations. The most common choice was a quiet room at home or at the day care center but,in some cases, the parent’s workplace or the university. The children were interviewed intheir everyday settings as follows: day care or family day care (50% Finland, 47% Estonia),home (48% Finland, 49% Estonia), and other place (2% Finland, 4% Estonia). The question-naire was mailed to the parents, who returned it either in connection with the child interviewor directly to the university.
Wherever possible, the interviewer visited the child ahead of the interview to give thechild a chance to get to know the interviewer. However, as it turned out, this was possiblewith no more than 21% of the Estonian and 18% of the Finnish children. Some children didget to meet the interviewer in advance at day care centers when other children were beinginterviewed.
The interviewers took their time to establish contact with the child, playing and talkinginformally with him or her before starting the interview. Given the high level of concentra-tion required and the importance of adapting to the child’s personal rhythm, no more thantwo interviews were conducted a day. On average, the interviews lasted about 49 (48.97)
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TABLE 1
The Analysis of Nonresponse
Estonia Finland
Not found (moved, without phone, etc.) — 14Refusals 4 12Lack of time 2 3Child’s serious disability — 2Excessive stress in family 1 4Child’s refusal to talk 1 3
NOTE: The response rate in Finland was 91% for parents and 93% for children. The respective figures are not avail-able for Estonia because whenever a child could not be contacted by phone or in person, a new child representing thesame gender and age group was picked from the register.
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minutes. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed. The parents were advised tocontact the interviewer afterward if they had any concerns or questions. (For more detaileddescriptions of the procedures, see Lahikainen et al., 1995, 2003.)
METHOD
PARENTS’ ASSESSMENTS
The parents assessed the child’s fears on 25 selected items of the Ollendick Fear SurveySchedule (FSSC-R; Ollendick et al., 1989) with the following introduction: “It is known thatseveral things may cause fear in children. Do they cause fear in this child?” Each fear itemwas to be ranked into one of the following three categories: none, to some extent, a lot.
The original schedule of fears contained 79 items and concerned children of school age. Ithas been criticized by Bouldin and Pratt (1998), who argued it omits items that are of rele-vance to preschool children. We decided to exclude items that were not suitable for youngerchildren (e.g., school-related fears; 15 items) as well as items that were deemed culturally orgeographically irrelevant or strange (e.g., roller coaster/carnival rides, earthquakes; 12items). The list of animals was also shortened (9 items), and the following items were com-bined: 5 items concerning medical fears were reduced to 2, 3 items describing punishmentswere reduced to 1 (criticism by parents, punishment by father/mother), strange and new peo-ple were combined, and the fear of elevators and closed places were combined (Lahikainenet al., 1995; Ollendick et al., 1989). In addition, parents had the opportunity to mention fearsthat did not appear on the list, but they rarely took advantage.
Principal axis factorial analysis with varimax rotation was conducted on the whole sam-ple (N = 339). On the basis of the eigenvalues, a six-factor solution was chosen. This wasthought to provide the most sensitive description of fears in both countries, and it came clos-est to those factor patterns that were separately conducted in the Estonian and the Finnishsample. These factors together explained 34.8% of the total variance (see Table 2). The sam-ple size resulted in a ratio of 13 cases to each observed variable. The factors are as follows:
1. Fear of Danger includes a burglar breaking into the house, being hit by a car or truck, closedplaces, getting lost in a strange place, and parental arguments.
2. Fear of Minor Injuries and Small Animals consists of fears of fire, high places, strange dogs, thesight of blood, bees, worms, or snakes.
3. Fear of the Unknown includes ghosts, nightmares, going to bed in the dark, and mystery mov-ies.
4. Fear of Being Alone includes either being alone or being left at home with a strange sitter.5. Fear of Failure and Criticism includes being teased, having to eat some food one does not like,
meeting someone for the first time, doing something new, and being punished by parents.6. Medical Fears include going to the dentist or doctor or having to go to hospital.
Although the factors do show similarities to the earlier factor analytical patterns of fears,there were also some differences. The self-rated fears of school-age children are usuallydescribed by a five-factor model (Gullone & King, 1992; Ollendick et al., 1989). Using arevised version of the FSSC for parents (including 94 items, 15 reworded and 14 new items),Bouldin and Pratt (1998) found three new factors in addition to the five traditional ones. Inour study, “having my parents argue” is loaded onto Factor 1, Fear of Danger, whereas it usu-ally loads onto the factor Fear of Failure and Criticism (Bouldin & Pratt, 1998; Gullone &
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King, 1992; Ollendick et al., 1989). Furthermore, the items under Fear of the Unknown arespread across two separate factors, one related to excitement and imagination and the otherto being alone.
The reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for the total scale in the current sample of parents was0.88 (0.91 for Finland and 0.79 for Estonia). Furthermore, Cronbach’s alphas for the six fac-tors were as follows: Fear of Danger (0.72), Fear of Minor Injuries and Small Animals(0.68), Fear of the Unknown (0.69), Fear of Being Alone (0.54), Fear of Failure and Criti-cism (0.53), and Medical Fears (0.54).
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TABLE 2
Rotated Factor Loadings for the 25 Items of the FearSurvey Schedule Presented for Parents (n = 360)
Factor
Factor 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Fear of Death and DangerBurglar breaking into house .67 .12 .21 .12 .01 .00Being hit by a car or truck .57 .34 –.05 –.04 .02 .08Closed places .48 .17 .20 .22 .08 –.04Getting lost in a strange place .44 .18 .15 .27 .15 .05Parental arguments .41 .00 .13 –.12 .36 .10Death .26 .26 .25 .12 .06 .15
2. Fear of Minor Injuries and Small AnimalsFire .32 .57 .06 .10 .01 –.01High places .02 .55 .05 .05 .06 .04Strange dogs .04 .54 –.04 .04 .14 –.07The sight of blood .19 .43 .15 .01 .05 .15Worms or snails etc .23 .41 .15 .11 .08 .06Thunderstorms .14 .30 .22 .16 .02 .12
3. Fear of the UnknownGhosts/imaginary creatures .08 .06 .67 .11 .08 .04Nightmares .20 .13 .59 .05 .24 .08Darkness/going to bed in the dark .00 .06 .58 .22 .06 .08Mystery movies .18 .07 .41 –.02 .08 .00
4. Fear of Being AloneBeing alone .19 .09 .19 .67 .00 .05Being left at home with a strange sitter .03 .13 .08 .45 .25 .06
5. Fear of Failure and CriticismBeing teased by other children .26 .03 .19 –.12 .47 .07Having to eat some food he or she does not like .02 .04 .08 .21 .46 .00Meeting someone for the first time –.01 .22 .08 .16 .36 .11
(meeting a strange people)Doing something new .00 .25 .07 .03 .30 .25Getting punished by parents .24 .06 .09 .21 .24 .01
6. Medical FearsGoing to dentist/doctor –.03 –.03 .06 .02 .08 .78Having to go to hospital .26 .25 .10 .14 .13 .47
Child interview. The children were interviewed by students or postgraduate students inboth Finland (n = 7) and Estonia (n = 4). Special training was provided ahead of the inter-views by the same trainees in both countries. The majority of the interviewers were peda-gogues or social science students. We have described the recruitment and training processesin closer detail elsewhere (see Lahikainen et al., 1995, 2003).
The semistructured interview consisted of three parts. First, the child’s network of signifi-cant persons was asked. Then, the interviewer talked with the child about his or her fears.This discussion was started as follows: “All people, even adults, are sometimes afraid ofsomething, although they may be afraid of different things than children. I would now like toknow, what kinds of things are you afraid of?” The children were allowed to speak abouttheir fears for as long as they had something to say about the subject (for more details, seeLahikainen et al., 2003). Then, in the picture-aided part, eight pictures were shown with ashort story about a girl or a boy appearing in the picture (depending on the interviewee’s gen-der). After each story, the child was asked, “How does Lisa/Lars feel? Is she/he afraid? Howafraid is she/he, and what does she/he do afterwards?” The pictures represented fearful situa-tions, each of them having a counterpart in Ollendick’s (1983) list of fears and representingdifferent dimensions of children’s fears (Fear of Failure and Criticism: other children areteasing, parents are arguing, parents are criticizing the child; Fear of the Unknown: going tobed alone in the dark, parents are going on a trip; Fear of Danger and Death: getting lost in theforest and getting lost surrounded by strange people; Medical Fears: going to the doctor).The pictures were as simple as possible, focusing only on the object necessary to concretizethe topic concerned (see also Lahikainen et al., 2003).
To measure the intensity of fears both in the semistructured interviews and in the picture-aided part, we used the technique developed by Carpenter (1990) for assessing experiencesof fear and pain in children (Children’s Global Rating Scale). When the child was speakingabout a particular fear, the interviewer showed the child a picture with three different lines:The upper line with sharp curves (black) designated great, the middle line with moderatecurves (red) designated average, and the lower line with mild curves (green) designated min-imal fear. The child showed how afraid he or she was in the case of each fear. The techniqueproved to be well suited to its purpose; the children promptly understood what was expectedof them, and they willingly used the chart.
Separate factor analyses were carried out on the fears expressed by the children in thesemistructured interview and in the picture-aided interview. First, the fears expressed by thechildren in the semistructured part were classified into 19 categories (Kirmanen, 2000;Lahikainen et al., 2003). Six categories were excluded from the factor analysis because lessthan 10% of the children had mentioned fears from these categories. This allowed us to avoidlogical correlations between variables. The fear categories that were omitted were fear ofthunderstorms and so forth; fear of war, attacks, guns, and so forth; fear of traffic accidents;fear of new things and situations; fear of going to sleep; and fear of medical events. The finalfactor analysis was composed of 13 of the most common fears that the children had men-tioned (see Table 3). The principal axis method and varimax rotation were used on a totalsample of 330 children and separately for subsamples of Estonian and Finnish children. Thefive-factor model for the total sample was accepted on the basis of the eigenvalues. Themodel explained 31.2% of the variance. The sample size resulted in a ratio of 25 cases to eachobserved variable. Cronbach’s alphas for five factors (based on semistructured interview)were as follows: Fear of Loss and Death (0.44), Fear of Nightmares and Television (0.52),
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Fear of Animals (0.31), Fear of Behavior of Significant Adults and Peers (0.37), and Fear ofBeing Alone and Lost (0.40).
1. Fear of Loss and Death consists of fear of loss or rejection of a significant person, fear of seriousaccidents and death, and fear of imaginary creatures.
2. Fear of Nightmares and Television.3. Fear of Animals consists of fear of familiar or wild animals.4. Fear of Behavior of Significant Adults or Peers.5. Fear of Being Alone and Being Lost.
The principal axis factor analysis (with varimax rotation) of eight items in the picture-aided interview yielded two factors (see Table 4). These two factors explained 27.12% of thetotal variance. The sample size resulted in a ratio of 25 cases to each observed variable.Cronbach’s alphas were 0.59 (Fear of Separation) and 0.56 (Fear of Criticism and Aggres-sive Behavior).
1. Fear of Separation (unknown) includes fears of the following: getting lost in the forest, gettinglost in a big crowd, going to the doctor, and parents leaving on a trip.
2. Fear of Criticism and Aggressive Behavior consists of fear of being teased, fear of being criti-cized by parents, and having parents argue.
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TABLE 3
Rotated Factor Loadings for the 13 Items of Self-ReportedFears of Children in Semistructured Interview (n = 360)
Factor 1 2 3 4 5
1. Fear of Loss and DeathFear of loss or rejection of a significant person
and the other fears of separation .56 –.06 .08 .14 .28Fear of big accidents and death .51 .08 .03 .06 –.04Fear of imaginary creatures .35 .10 .15 –.02 .05Fears connected with strange adults .25 –.03 –.05 .17 .07Fears of small accidents and danger situations .18 –.02 .15 .16 .12
2. Fear of Nightmares and Television ProgramsFear of nightmares –.11 .77 –.18 .11 .11Fear of television programs .20 .51 .13 –.01 .07
3. Fear of AnimalsFear of imaginary and unfamiliar animals .01 .10 .76 –.05 –.08Fear of familiar animals .11 –.09 .24 .12 .07
4. Fear of Behavior of Significant Adults or PeersFears connected with significant adults .10 .01 –.03 .73 .03Fears connected with peers .06 .20 .11 .30 –.01
5. Fear of Being Alone and Being LostFear of being alone and being lost .30 .01 –.03 .03 .56Fear of darkness –.01 .10 .03 .01 .46
COMPARISON OF FEARS IN ESTONIAN AND IN FINNISH CHILDREN
To get an overall picture of children’s fears in both groups of informants, we counted themeans of the factor score variables separately for the Estonian and Finnish samples; t test fortwo-tailed significance was used (see Table 5).
According to the parents, the most evident differences between the two cultures were asfollows: Estonian children were more often than Finnish children afraid of being alone,whereas children in Finland were more afraid of the unknown than were children in Estonia.Significant differences were found in the fear of injuries and animals in favor of Estonianchildren and in the fear of danger in favor of Finnish children. No differences emergedbetween the children from the two countries in terms of their fears of failure and criticism orin their fear of seeing the doctor.
The Estonian children said more often that they were afraid of loss and death and of ani-mals. Children in Finland, on the other hand, disclosed more fears of television programsand nightmares. Furthermore, the picture-aided interview revealed greater fear of criticismand of aggressive behavior in Estonia than in Finland. No significant differences were foundbetween the two countries in fears of others’ behavior, fear of darkness and fear of gettinglost (in the semistructured interview), or the fear of separation (in the picture-aided part).
The picture of fears emerging from the parents’and their children’s responses is very sim-ilar in both cultures, although interpretation of the results is not quite straightforward onaccount of the somewhat differing factor contents (Fear of Animals, Fear of the Unknown/Fear of Nightmares and of Television, and Fear of Being Alone/Fear of Loss and Death).However, it is noteworthy that cultural differences in the fear of aggressive behavior by sig-nificant others are seen only in the children’s responses and only when the stimuli arepresented in iconic form.
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TABLE 4
Rotated Factor Loadings for the Eight Items of thePicture-Aided Fears of Children (n = 360)
Factor 1 2
1. Fear of SeparationParents are leaving for a trip .53 .24Going to doctor .50 .21Getting lost in the forest .45 .08Getting lost in a big crowd .41 .16Going to sleep alone .36 .09
2. Fears of Criticism and Aggressive BehaviorBeing teased .12 .68Having parents argue .18 .51Parents are criticizing .32 .35
DISTRIBUTION OF FEARS ACCORDING TO PARENTS AND THE CHILDREN
We move on now to discuss the distribution and intensity of fears in both cultures. The fre-quency distributions of different fears as assessed by the child and by the parents on therespective items are shown in Table 6.
In both countries, children reported more frequent and more intensive fears than did theirparents on all dimensions; the single exception to this rule was the assessment by Finnishparents of the fear of teasing.
AGREEMENT BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHILDREN IN ESTONIA AND IN FINLAND
Correlations between factor variables were counted to establish the level of agreementbetween the children’s and parents’ assessments. Furthermore, kappa coefficients and con-ditional probabilities were counted for comparable items of fear in the child interview and inthe parent survey. Before these contingency analyses, the scales of the variables weredichotomized, with one category composed of cases in which fear is absent and the othercases in which fear is present.
Significant correlations were found between parents’assessments and self-reported fearsas follows: Fear of the Unknown (parent’s assessment) showed a positive correlation withFear of Nightmares and Television (child’s report; .19**) and with fear of darkness andbeing lost (child’s report; .12*). Fear of Injuries and Animals (parent’s assessment) corre-lated with Fear of Animals (Child’s report; .18*). Fear of Being Alone (parent’s assessment)correlated negatively with Fear of Nightmares and Television (child’s assessment; –.24**).The same significant correlations were also found separately in each country.
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TABLE 5
Means of Fear Factor Scores in Finnish and in EstonianChildren Based on Parent Survey and Child Interview
Finland Estonia t Value (sign.)
Parents as informantsFear factorsDanger .07 –.14 .02Injuries and Animals –.10 .19 .00Unknown .12 –.22 .00Being Alone –.16 .30 .00Failure and Criticism –.02 .03 nsFear of Doctor –.04 .07 ns
Children as informantsFear factors (semistructured)
Loss and Death –.15 .28 .00Television and Nightmares .37 –.69 .00Animals –.18 .34 .00Behavior of Others –.03 .05 nsDarkness and Getting Lost .04 –.07 ns
In Table 7, selected fear items are rank ordered according to the percentages of parentswho omit to mention or who do not recognize their child’s fear (parental recognition isabsent when the child’s self-report is positive).
More than one third of the parents overlooked their children’s fears on between 7 to 13items in Finland and on 9 in Estonia. The most prominent feature is the general omission ofmost fears by parents. The one exception to this tendency is observed for the fear of gettinglost. Fear of being left alone without parents and fear of the doctor, fear of parental punish-ment (in Finland), and fear of parental arguments (in Estonia) are the fears that are hardestfor parents to recognize.
Estonian parents tend to overlook more often than Finnish parents their children’s fear ofmystery movies, parental arguments, and being teased by other children. Typical fears thatare overlooked by Finnish parents are the fear of being left alone without parents and paren-tal punishment.
Kappa values indicating the consistency of the parents’ and children’s ratings in Finlandand in Estonia were low across all the fear items. The child’s gender and age and the parents’educational status showed only minor effects on the level of agreement in this sample. Onlythree significant kappa values were found in the groups of children age 5 and 6 for the girlsand the boys and for all of them in the group of 6-year-old girls (see Table 8).
Conditional probabilities for parents can be interpreted as indicators of parental recogni-tion of the fear, the child’s conditional probability, and that child’s ability to use the methodchosen. The analysis of conditional probabilities shows, then, that parents and children areselective in producing answers concerning fears in different ways. The results from the twodifferent groups of informants are differently biased. Some fears are easy for both to express,such as the fear of getting lost. On the other hand, it seems to be particularly difficult for par-ents to recognize such fears in which they are themselves directly or indirectly involved (e.g.,the fear of going to bed at night, being alone, or being left alone without one’s parents).
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TABLE 7
The Ranking Order of the Fears Unrecognized by theParents, Reported by the Child (in percentagesa)
Finland Estonia
Fears present in picture-aided interview of the childStaying without parents 75 59Going to the doctor 52 47Parents are punishing 41 18Going to sleep alone in the dark 36 37Parental arguments 34 58Other children are teasing 26 49Getting lost surrounded by 30 14Strange people getting lost in the forest 14 14
Fears present in the semistructured interview of the childStrange people 65 56Nightmares 35 25Being alone 22 34Mystery movies 22 50Mystery creatures 20 37
a. Percentages of cases where parental recognition of fear is absent when the child’s report is positive.
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Furthermore, the cultural context comes into play. It seems that it is easier for children toreport their fears in a picture-aided interview, particularly so when highly emotional topicsare involved (e.g., fear of being left alone without parents, fear of going to bed alone). Fearsthat were found to be particularly difficult for a child to communicate without iconic repre-sentation were the fear of being alone and the fear of nightmares (in Estonia). The formerfear is cognitively very demanding as well.
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
FEARS ARE CULTURALLY FRAMED AND MODIFIED
The cross-cultural setting of our study provides a useful vantage point for exploring bothcultural variation and consistency in the assessments of fear. Our results strongly suggestthat cultural and social contexts influence the content of fears even in preschool children.This happens through everyday interaction with the socialization agents at home and in daycare as well as outside these relationships, for example, through media. Finnish childrenmore often expressed fear related to mental overexcitation (television and nightmares),whereas the fears of Estonian children more often concerned concrete people and theirbehavior (loss, rejection, aggressive behavior, and animals, including rare animals). Inresearch of different educational styles, the Estonian parents have turned out to be moreauthoritarian in their educational practices, emphasizing punishment more than did the Finn-ish parents (Hämäläinen, Kraav, & Raudik, 1994). Also, compliance is higher in parentalhierarchy of educational values in Estonia than in Finland, whereas the Finnish parentsappreciate more self-realization and liberty (Hämäläinen et al., 1994). The Estonian youngchildren may also respond to parental stress and their lack of time with fears of loss, rejec-tion, and aggressive behavior and of criticism by the adults. The higher prevalence oftelevision-related fears among Finnish children may reflect the higher television programexposure, especially of international news as well as action and horror programs in Finland;in Estonia, programs are more national (Lahikainen et al., 2004). Our results are consistentwith earlier comparative studies on fears (Elbedour et al., 1997; Ollendick et al., 1996;Tikalsky & Wallace, 1988) and emphasize cultural differences in fears, which originate fromdifferent styles of socialization and cultural emic features. As Gullone (2000) pointed out,more cross-cultural analysis and research are required (measures developed within culture)as opposed to the imposed-etic approach that has been used.
There are numerous possible sources of variation in the occurrence of fears between dif-ferent cultures. Assessments vary across cultures depending on the specific cultural meaningof the object of fear. Children may adopt cultural norms of expressing emotions at an earlyage. These norms must be taken into account, most particularly in the context ofsemistructured interviews in which children may want to avoid certain topics. As far as par-ents are concerned, cultural norms of good parenting may impede and bias parental evalua-tion of their children. For instance, they may feel uncertain of their real or imagined omis-sions of care or educational styles; consequently, parents’ own fears of criticism interferewith their evaluation of their child’s fears. Therefore, they may be inclined systematically tohide certain fears or/and to emphasize others.
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PARENTS AND CHILDREN AS INFORMANTS OF THE CHILD’S FEARS
An important finding of our study is that significant correlations were found between par-ents’fear-assessment factors and children’s fear factors. It was also possible to draw a similarprofile with regard to the differences and similarities between the fears of Estonian and Finn-ish children separately on the basis of the parents’ and the children’s answers. In a culturalcomparison, both groups of informants validated each other’s responses significantly.
However, there was a low level of agreement between parents and their young childrenregarding the occurrence and intensity of specific fear items. The same observation has beenmade in many child psychiatric studies (Barrett et al., 1991; Bird et al., 1992). The resultapplies to both countries in our study. The child’s age and gender had only a minor impact.We could not confirm that parents were better in evaluating their daughters’ than their sons’fears, as has been reported in some earlier studies.
It is noteworthy that the main differences between parents’ fear assessments and chil-dren’s self-report are similar in both countries. Children indicate more frequent and moreintense fears on the items of the picture-aided interview in both cultures than is reported bytheir parents. The same finding has been made earlier in studies concerning children’s symp-toms (Begun et al., 1990; Bird et al., 1992; Edelbrock et al., 1986; Lambert et al., 1990). Howdo we explain the discrepancies observed between the views of the two groups of infor-mants? The difference has been attributed to the desirability effect among parents (Birdet al., 1992; Edelbrock et al., 1986). The reason why informants have different assessmentsmay also have to do with the context dependence of the child’s behavior (Begun et al., 1990)or to the informants’ different opportunities to observe the child (Lambert et al., 1990). It ispossible that parents underestimate fears not only because of the desirability effect but alsobecause it is difficult for them to recognize fears, for instance, when they are themselvesinvolved in a fear-inducing situation (e.g., parental arguments, parental criticism, or fear ofdeath of a significant person).
It is also worth noting that there were some fears that were only found in thesemistructured child interview. These fears are not covered in the fear schedules. In particu-lar, children very often reported fears related to television programs. This was the most com-mon type of fear of all according to the children in the Finnish sample; in the Estonian sam-ple, this kind of fear was the second most common (Lahikainen et al., 2003). Children’sresponses to the question “What are you afraid of?” also provide new insights into the waysthat children construct fears. For example, the category Fear of Behavior of Significant Oth-ers included different kinds of descriptions of harmful and dissatisfying behavior of othersand pain caused by others. It is noteworthy that children at the age of 5 to 6 are not afraid onlyof criticism or punishment but of the larger scale of actions of others that hurt them.
Our findings can be summarized as follows: Children’s fears reflect their personal experi-ence in their society and culture. However, there is something universal in being a childacross cultures.
Independently of the informant, the main cultural differences in children’s fears were evi-denced. This is an important finding, suggesting that the semistructured child interview hasvalidity as an indicator of fear in comparative studies.
The study confirms earlier findings regarding the low level of agreement between childand parent assessments, indicating that both parents and young children themselves areimportant informants. Our data also confirm that young children report more symptoms thando parents. The novelty in our case is that these phenomena are here demonstrated in two dif-ferent cultures, suggesting that they are not dependent on cultural context.
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Our comparison of informants in two cultures also revealed that even young children arepartly unique as informants of their fears, suggesting that they should indeed be used asinformants.
METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS: IMPROVEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS
Our cross-cultural comparison involved some minor methodological limitations thatneed to be addressed here. The sample sizes varied considerably for reasons that had to dowith the resources available in the respective countries. The Estonian sample was kept to abare minimum for purposes of statistical comparison between the two countries. A largersample size would have given greater control over the background factors. Furthermore, thefactor-analytical score variables used in the comparison were based on factor analyses fromthe whole sample consisting of subsamples of different sizes. This means that the variation inthe bigger sample has a greater impact on the factor loadings. This was not, however, a prob-lem in the comparisons because the factor pattern outcomes of the analyses of the countrysamples were very similar.
Our factor analysis of the fear survey for parents was composed of 25 selected items of theFSSC-R and produced the same type of factor structure as in earlier studies (Bouldin & Pratt,1998; Ollendick et al., 1989). It seems then that the reduction of the initial items was success-ful enough and that the most prevalent fears were depicted. The variance of factor patternsexplained was not very high but remained at the same level as is ordinarily the case in fearstudies using FSSC (e.g., see Bouldin & Pratt, 1998). The differences found in the factor pat-terns in this study reveal some interesting discrepancies with earlier studies, which mayreflect the age effect on the construction of fears. Parental arguing is more threatening toyounger children and is therefore associated with the fear of danger, whereas among olderchildren it is more closely associated with the threatening behavior of adults. Fear of theUnknown was divided into two categories: Fears were either associated with excitement orwith concrete threats of being left alone without parents.
The factor analyses of the fears depicted in the semistructured child interview yielded afive-factor pattern that deviates interestingly from adult-based fear factors. The fear of losingsignificant others is more central to the children’s factor pattern than it is to the factor patternbased on adult evaluations. In defining the basic categories for children’s self-reported fears,we have preferred to use categories that came as close as possible to the child’s own con-structs rather than using any set categories (Kirmanen, 2000; Lahikainen et al., 1995, 2003).The results concerning young children’s fears are thus highly dependent on the indicators offear chosen.
Although it is possible to develop fear schedules for parents on the basis of the resultsobtained from child interviews as in this study, there do still remain some problems. A com-plete, representative list of fears is hardly conceivable. For example, Estonian children wereable to mention 17 types of familiar and 30 types of unfamiliar animals, whereas Finnishchildren identified 27 types of familiar and 41 types of unfamiliar animals in semistructuredinterviews. Television-related fears also concerned different kinds of programs: documenta-ries, news, entertainment for parents, and children’s programs (Lahikainen et al., 1995). Inother words, regardless of the instruments chosen, the measurement of general fearfulnesswill in all probability be more or less biased. It is important to discuss, therefore, what kindsof fears are most relevant to children and how they should be measured.
The fear measures used in this study have their advantages and their drawbacks. Fear listsfor parents and picture-aided interviews for children are comparable methods for purposes
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of making the fears inquired equally salient to the informants, but the associations arising inconnection with a word or a picture may obviously differ. In many cases, it is also difficult tofind an exact pictorial presentation for the phenomenon concerned: In addition toconcretizing, the picture also narrows down. We chose our methods of data collection on thebasis of what we thought would be the most effective strategy both for the parents and for thechildren, given the limited financial and time resources available and the requirements ofhaving as similar measures as possible. The most effective measures in the case of childrenare not necessarily the most effective measures for parents and vice versa. However, ourcombination of several different methods did at least allow us to demonstrate the culturalvariability of fears.
We also believe we have been able to offer some guidelines for the improvement of bothfear survey schedules and child interviews. Children can provide indispensable informationabout their experiences, which serves as a critical mirror of the adult-centric view onchildhood.
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Anja Riitta Lahikainen has been a professor of social psychology since 1998 in the Department of Sociologyand Social Psychology at the University of Tampere in Finland, where she directs the Research Unit of Child-hood and Family Studies. She earned her doctorate in social science in social psychology at the University ofHelsinki in 1984. She has been a lecturer in social psychology from 1976 to 1989 at the University of Helsinkiand a professor in social psychology at the University of Kuopio from 1989 to 1997. Her research interestsconcern comparative childhood research, children’s well-being, and family and day care as contexts ofdevelopment and upbringing. Her current research project concerns children’s well-being and media in acultural and societal context.
Inger Kraav received her Ph.D. in pedagogy at Tartu University in Estonia in 1984. Since then, she hasworked as a docent in education in the Department of Pedagogy at Tartu University. Her research interestsinclude family, education, and children’s well-being and security.
Tiina Kirmanen received her doctorate in social science in social psychology at the University of Kuopio inFinland in 2000. She is interested in children’s fears and well-being as well as the development of communalwelfare policies.
Merle Taimalu earned a licentiate in education in 1999 and is completing her Ph.D. in the Department ofGeneral Education at the University of Tartu. Her research interests concern children’s well-being and earlyeducation.
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