http://chd.sagepub.com/ Childhood http://chd.sagepub.com/content/10/1/83 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0907568203010001005 2003 10: 83 Childhood Anja Riitta Lahikainen, Tiina Kirmanen, Inger Kraav and Merle Taimalu Studying Fears in Young Children: Two Interview Methods Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Norwegian Centre for Child Research can be found at: Childhood Additional services and information for http://chd.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://chd.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://chd.sagepub.com/content/10/1/83.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Feb 1, 2003 Version of Record >> at Uni Lucian Blaga on April 8, 2014 chd.sagepub.com Downloaded from at Uni Lucian Blaga on April 8, 2014 chd.sagepub.com Downloaded from
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http://chd.sagepub.com/Childhood
http://chd.sagepub.com/content/10/1/83The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0907568203010001005
2003 10: 83ChildhoodAnja Riitta Lahikainen, Tiina Kirmanen, Inger Kraav and Merle TaimaluStudying Fears in Young Children: Two Interview Methods
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
Norwegian Centre for Child Research
can be found at:ChildhoodAdditional services and information for
This article discusses the results of a study that used two different interviewmethods to explore fears of young children in Estonia and in Finland. Thepurpose is to weigh and assess these methods by comparing the findingswith those of earlier research. At the same time, we hope to make a mean-ingful contribution to the discussion on the methodology of childhoodresearch and on the role of children as informants on their own life.
Recent research has greatly increased our understanding of children’sfears (e.g. Bouldin and Pratt, 1998; Burnham and Gullone, 1997; Craske,1997; Davidson et al., 1990; Elbedour et al., 1997; Gullone and King, 1992;King et al., 1989, 1994; Lentz, 1985a, 1985b; Muris et al., 1997a, 1997b;Ollendick et al., 1985, 1989; 1991, 1996; Ramirez and Kratochwill, 1997;Spence and McCathie 1993; Tarifa and Kloep, 1996). Much of this researchis based on self-reported fear survey schedules, with children themselvesproviding information about their fears. The most widely used of theseschedules is the Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC; Scherer andNakamura, 1968) and its revisions FSSC-R (Ollendick, 1983) and FSSC-II
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STUDYING FEARS IN YOUNG CHILDRENTwo interview methods
ANJA RIITTA LAHIKAINENUniversity of Tampere, Finland
TIINA KIRMANEN University of Kuopio, Finland
INGER KRAAV AND MERLE TAIMALUUniversity of Tartu, Estonia
Key words:cross-cultural differences, fear,
interviews, preschool age children,self-report
Mailing address:Anja Riitta Lahikainen
Department of Sociology and SocialPsychology, Fin–33014, University of
(Gullone and King, 1992). After extensions and revisions, the FSSC is nowrecognized as a reliable and valid method for studying children in differentcultural settings and age groups older than 7 years. However, neither theFSSC nor its revised versions are suitable for self-report use in childrenunder 7.
The work that has been done with younger children has shown littleconsistency either in terms of methods and informants used, or in terms ofits results. It follows that our knowledge of fears in young children remainsquite sporadic. Most of what we know about fears in young children is basedon clinical case reports (Bowlby, 1978; Freud, 1962) or on adults’ judge-ments. According to parental reports (using FSSC-IIP), the most commonfears in younger age groups are getting lost in a crowd and in a strange place(Bouldin and Pratt, 1998). Draper and James (1985) asked parents of chil-dren aged 24–72 months, ‘Is your child afraid of anything? What?’ andfound that the most common fears were startling events and noises, animalsand certain persons or objects.
Lenz (1985a, 1985b) used semi-structured doll-play to investigate thefears of 5- and 6-year-olds in three environments, i.e. home, school andbabysitter’s house, concentrating on fears or worries connected to specificsituations in these environments. Imaginary fears and fear of animals weretypical of this age group. Stevenson-Hinde and Shouldice (1995) investigat-ed the worries of 7-year-olds in strange situations by asking them if a rabbitdoll (‘Bix’) had worries, and if so, what kind of worries. The worriesexpressed by these children were related to family, performance and events.In an open-ended interview study where drawing was also used, Bauer(1976) reported that the most common fears of children aged 4–6 years werenightmares, monsters, ghosts and bedtime.
Psychiatric studies investigating agreement between parent and childreports have usually found low to moderate parent–child concordance on thechild’s symptoms (Thomson et al., 1993). Parents’ reports are affected bymany factors which often remain uncontrolled in the study. For example,parents’ conceptions of their child vary depending on the amount of timethey spend with the child as well as on the intimacy, confidentiality andopenness of the parent–child relationship. Because of the discrepanciesbetween parent and child reports, researchers have shown a growing interestin getting the information they need directly from children (Barret et al.,1991).
This is the assumption with which we have been working here: if wewant to obtain information about children’s fears, then we have to ask thechildren themselves, taking into account the limitations of young children’scognitive and verbal capacities. The information obtained from childrenthemselves is unique and cannot be fully substituted by information fromother sources (such as parents or teachers), even though it is partial and fil-tered in many respects. For example, the way in which children interpret the
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interview situation, the questions asked, etc., is very different from the waythey are seen by adults (Andanaes, 1991; Andersson, 1998; Bauer, 1976;Breakwell, 1990; Graue and Walsh, 1998; La Greca, 1990; Lentz, 1985a,1985b).
In our earlier study ‘Children’s Insecurity in Finland and in Estonia’(Lahikainen et al., 1995), fear is understood as an integral part of insecurity:it is seen as a way of articulating the relationship between self and the sur-rounding world and, to an extent, as an inevitable part of life at all ages(Lahikainen and Kraav, 1996). Fears belong to normal child development,but in excess they may block exploration with the world (Bowlby, 1978;Freud, 1962). We have used both parents and children themselves as infor-mants on children’s fears, and developed an interview method specificallysuited for children aged 5–6.
In this article we introduce two methods for studying children’s ownviews on their fears. These are the semi-structured interview and the picture-aided interview utilizing FSSC-R. We describe the interview scheme andthe interview process and evaluate the applicability of the interview methodfor purposes of studying fears in young children. A separate report will bepublished to compare parental information about children’s fears with theinformation given by children themselves.
Cross-cultural comparisons of children’s fears have revealed bothqualitative and quantitative differences, although the basic structure ofschool-age children’s fears, age and gender differences and the rankingorders of the most common fears seem to be very similar in the culturesexamined (Burnham and Gullone, 1997; Elbedour et al., 1997; Gullone andKing, 1992; Ollendick et al., 1989, 1991). The interview methods areapplied in this study in two cultures, Estonia and Finland. The greater cultur-al variation of fears thus gained improves the evaluation of validity andapplicability of these methods.
Finland (pop. 5.5 million) and Estonia (pop. 1.1 million) are indepen-dent, geographically neighbouring countries lying on the coast of the BalticSea, both sharing common borders with Russia. The peoples of the twocountries are ethnically related and belong to the same Fenno-Ugric lan-guage group. Up to the Second World War the countries shared a very simi-lar historical development, but after the war Estonia was annexed to theSoviet Union whereas Finland retained independence, moving on to becomea successful Nordic welfare state and to join the European Union in 1995.Estonia regained independence in 1991. It is now a fast-developing post-socialist market economy, struggling with immense internal problems andconflict.
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Semi-structured interviewThe theoretical and practical insights gained from interviews of 5-year-oldsin the project ‘Childhood, Society and Development in the NordicCountries’ (Andenaes et al., 1987) were utilized in the planning and designof our semi-structured interview. Different forms of preliminary interviewswere successfully conducted with 5- and 6-year-old children: the informantswere responsive and spoke about their fears in both group settings and alsoover the phone. Telephone interviews, however, clearly involve a greater riskof losing contact than do face-to-face interviews, which allow for interrup-tions and sudden loss of interest on the part of the child and a wider varietyof means for expressing encouragement and empathy on the part of the inter-viewer. The major drawback of the group interview is that other childrenhave a great impact on individual responses; the group view and individualviews are intermingled. On the basis of these experiments, which alsoincluded different ways of wording questions, the decision was made to useindividual face-to-face interviews; this was considered the most reliable andleast vulnerable method (Lahikainen et al., 1991).
The semi-structured interview was divided into four parts, dealingwith the child’s significant relationships, threats associated with these rela-tionships, fears and happy aspects of life. Because of the sensitivity of thetopic, the interviews were both initiated and finished with positive things inthe children’s lives. To begin with the child constructed the network of his orher significant people in the form of a target diagram. It was thought thatreminding the child about significant persons in his or her everyday lifewould help to reduce the feelings of anxiety and insecurity that might arisein the company of a strange adult. The diagram also helped the interviewerto orient to the child’s social relationships.
The section concerning children’s fears started with the followingintroduction: ‘All people, even adults are sometimes afraid of something,although they may be afraid of different things than children.’ This was thenfollowed by the main question, i.e. ‘What things are you afraid of?’Additional questions were allowed where necessary. For each fear the wholefear process1 was documented until the subject was exhausted. If the childhad difficulties getting started, the interviewers were allowed to ask whetherthe child was afraid of animals, television programmes or nightmares. Thesethree topics were selected as examples of common and uncommon fears, andthey were incorporated in the interview scheme and asked systematically ifthey were not mentioned by the child. The semi-structured interview wasfollowed by the picture-aided section.
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Picture-aided interviewIt was assumed that pictorial representation of fear-provoking situationsmakes fears more salient to children and in this way facilitates recollection.Bauer (1976) observed that it is easier for children to relate to iconic repre-sentations than to abstract, verbal representational modes of expression. Inour study we selected eight items of fear from the FSSC-R (Ollendick, 1983)and presented them to the children in the form of a picture connected with ashort story. The child was asked to say how much the child in the illustratedstory was afraid. The choice of this method was based on the experience thatit is considered less threatening to answer questions for another (same-sex)child than it is to answer direct questions (see Stevenson-Hinde andShouldice, 1995).
The items represented social situations which as such were quite neu-tral but which in the light of earlier studies may nonetheless evoke feelingsof fear. Four out of six factors in common factor patterns of fears (in theFSSC-R) were present (Ollendick, 1983). Fears representing two other fac-tors, i.e. fears of minor injury and fears of small animals, were thought to becognitively simple enough and neutral for children to be able to talk aboutthem freely. Besides, it is very difficult to provide an inclusive description offear of animals and minor injuries in just a few pictures. The fear itemsincluded in the picture-aided interview were as follows (with the corre-sponding factors of fear given in parentheses).
1. Going to bed in the dark (fear of the unknown).2. Parents leaving for a long trip (fear of the unknown).3. Being teased by other children (fear of failure and criticism).4. Having my parents argue (fear of failure and criticism).5. Parents criticizing me (fear of failure and criticism).6. Getting lost in the forest (fear of danger and death).7. Getting lost surrounded by strange people (fear of danger anddeath).8. Going to the doctor (medical fears).
The pictures drawn were as simple as possible, representing only the objectsneeded to concretize the topic concerned. The research team evaluated sev-eral models before making their final selection.
Measuring the intensity of fearThe intensity of fear was measured by the assessment technique developedby Carpenter (1990), which is used for studying experiences of fear and pain(Children’s Global Rating Scale, CGRS). When the child was talking about acertain fear, the interviewer showed him or her a table presenting three different lines: the upper line (black) with sharp curves (like in speech bub-
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bles of angry speech) designated great fear, the middle one (red) with wavesrepresented average fear, and the lower one (green) with a straight line, min-imal fear. In this way the child was able to indicate how afraid he or she wasin the case of each fear both in the semi-structured interview and in the pic-ture-aided section.
Interview procedure
Selection and training of interviewers: The interviewers were recruitedfrom among students, postgraduate students or people who had worked withchildren, on the basis of an interview conducted by an expert. Training con-sisted of lectures on child development and the interview technique as wellas practical interview training first within the group and then with children.Preliminary interviews were recorded for analysis in the training sessions.Each interviewer also received individual tutoring. Originally prepared inFinnish, the training guide was translated into Estonian. The training wasprovided in both countries partly by the same person.
Creating contact and principles of interview: Parents were first informedabout the research project by letter. They were then contacted directly by theinterviewer, who made an appointment for the date and place of the inter-view. The parents were asked to tell the child about the study in advance andto encourage the child to participate. They were also advised to arrange themeeting at a time of the day that best suited their child (when the child wasnot tired or hungry, etc.).
The interview began with a general introduction of the research pro-ject. The interviewers explained that adults did not know very much aboutwhat it is like to be a child, and that they wanted know more about thechild’s feelings. It was also made clear that nothing the child said would bepassed on to anyone else, either to parents or caretakers. Before the actualinterview the child and interviewer spent some time together, playing andtalking informally. If they wanted to the children were also allowed to makeacquaintance with the tape recorder. All of the children were given a smallpresent (stickers, etc.) at the beginning of the interview as a token of appre-ciation for their acceptance to take part.
The interviewers’ guide included the following instructions:
• Create a calm, peaceful, unhurried and approving atmosphere;• Talk slowly with careful articulation;• All interaction should happen at the child’s level, with thechild’s and the interviewer’s faces at the same level;• Make it clear both verbally and non-verbally that you areinterested in what the child is saying;• Favour positive feedback;
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• Make sure you understand what the child is thinking, whatlies behind the words;• Interruptions by the child because of tiredness, sudden com-peting interests, etc. should be allowed.
Neutrality was considered the ethically correct attitude for interviewers totake towards the child in all circumstances. The interview would give thechild a model for talking about even difficult and anxiety-raising things. Atthe end of the interview the children were asked if they wanted to listen tothe recorded interview.
The contact information for the researcher were given to the parentsand they were encouraged to call if anything bothered or disturbed them inthe child after the interview.
Setting of interview: The interviews were carried out in settings that werefamiliar to the children (mainly at home or at their daycare centre) as sug-gested by their parents. Where possible the interviews were arranged in aseparate room. However, if the child did not want to be alone with thestrange interviewer, they were followed by their parents or siblings. Theinterviews were tape recorded and later transcribed (Kirmanen, 2000;Lahikainen et al., 1995). Each interviewer was allowed to conduct no morethan two interviews a day.
ParticipantsThe random samples comprised 240 5- and 6-year-old children in Finlandand 120 5- and 6-year-old children in Estonia, drawn from the populationregisters of the respective countries. The response rate in Finland was 93percent. In Estonia, another child was selected from the register if the firstchoice could not be reached by phone or a visit. In Estonia four parents andone child refused to participate, in Finland nine families were inaccessible,while seven parents and two children refused to participate. The final num-ber of children participating in Estonia was 117, in Finland the figure was222. The data were gathered in 1993 (in Finland) and 1994 (in Estonia).
In Finland, 50 percent of the children were aged 5 and 50 percent aged6. In Estonia, 41 percent of the children were 5 years and 59 percent 6 yearsof age. In both countries the children came from a medium-sized universitycity situated at more or less the same distance from the capital of the countryand its surrounding areas.
Results
Constructing the fear categoriesThe fears expressed by the children in the semi-structured interviews were classified into 19 categories (see Table 1) on the basis of a qualitative
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analysis (Kirmanen, 2000). The fear categories were jointly constructed bythe Finnish and Estonian researchers after several efforts, using data fromboth countries. The criteria used in constructing the categories were as fol-lows: the system should be illuminating, i.e. broad enough to include allitems of fear mentioned by the children, and it should condense the informa-tion given by the children. Each cluster of fears should represent the child’sbehavioural or cognitive level. If the child said that she or he is afraid of aghost that might appear in the dark, for example, then both fear of darknessand fear of imaginary creatures were documented.
The presence of fear in each category was independently coded by tworesearchers, who showed a high level of agreement in their assessments (seeTable 1). The interrater reliability measured by coefficient of consistency fortwo dependent codings varied from .70 to 1.00. The categories were alsoquite inclusive: only 0.3 percent of the fears mentioned by the children couldnot be slotted into any of the categories.
Most of the children talked openly about their fears. Only five Finnishchildren and six Estonian children refused to name any frightening situationor object.
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Table 1 Fear categories and consistency of ratings between two independent coders(measured by kappa coefficient)
Fear of
Behaviour of significant adults 1.00
Behaviour of peers 0.95
Traffic accidents 1.00
Thunderstorms, etc. 1.00
Minor injuries 0.91
Animals 1.00
Losing a loved one 0.96
Strange people 0.95
New things and situations 0.88
Imaginary creatures 1.00
Nightmares 1.00
Darkness 0.93
Television programmes 1.00
Going to sleep in the dark 0.85
Accidents and death 0.94
War, guns and violence 1.00
Unfamiliar animals 1.00
Being alone or getting lost 1.00
Medical fears 0.70
N = 130.
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Finnish and Estonian children’s fears according to the semi-structured interviewsOn average, Finnish children expressed 5.5 fears and Estonian children 5.2fears. The average fearfulness score in Finland was 9.2, in Estonia 9.9.Neither the average number of fears reported by the children nor overallfearfulness (the sum intensity of all fear items mentioned by the childrenmin 0, max 3 x 19) in the semi-structured interviews differed significantlybetween the two countries.
Eight of the 10 most intensely rated fears were the same for Finnishand Estonian children (Table 2). In both countries, television programmes,familiar and unfamiliar animals, imaginary creatures, minor injuries, strangepeople, accidents and death and being alone or getting lost were among thetop 10 fears. Children in both countries reported a large number of familiaranimals that frightened them, 26 in Finland and 22 in Estonia: the animalsmentioned most often were snakes, strange dogs, wasps, bulls and spiders.Estonian children were more afraid of different kinds of animals than weretheir Finnish counterparts (Table 3). An interesting country differenceemerged in the fear of spiders, which according to many previous studies isone of the most common fears of children (see Muris et al., 1997b). InEstonia, 13 percent of the children said they were afraid of spiders, inFinland the figure was only 4 percent.
Unfamiliar animals comprise both wild animals (lions, tigers, etc.) andimaginary animals (giant birds who catch people, etc.). The animals men-tioned most often in this category were lions, bears, tigers, wolves anddinosaurs. The children in Finland named 35 different kinds of unfamiliar
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Table 2 The 10 most common fears of 5- to 6-year-old Finnish and Estonian childrenreported in semi-structured interviews (percentages indicating they are afraid ’a lot’)
Finnish Estonian
Item description (%) Item description (%)
Television 37.2 Unfamiliar animals 44.3
Unfamiliar animals 33.5 Familiar animals 30.4
Familiar animals 21.4 Imaginary creatures 23.5
Nightmares 15.8 Television 19.1
Imaginary creatures 11.6 Strange people 13.9
Minor injuries 7.9 Minor injuries 10.4
Darkness/dark places 7.0 Losing a loved one 9.6
Strange people 6.0 New things and situations 7.8
Accidents and death 5.1 Accidents and death 7.8
Being alone/getting lost 5.1 Being alone/getting lost 5.2
Note: Fears in the top 10 list in both countries are in italics.
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animals, in Estonia the number was 26. Estonian children were also moreafraid of these kinds of animals than Finnish children (Table 3). The samewas true of monsters, ghosts, vampires and other imaginary creatures.
Fears aroused by television are very common in early childhood. Inparticular, programmes showing shootings, killings or other kinds of vio-lence, either in the real world (e.g. news about wars) or in a fictitious world,were a major cause of fears among our children. Some of the childrenreferred to television programmes in general, for instance ‘a programmewhere people shoot each other’ or ‘programmes where the bad guys kill chil-dren’. However, some programmes were also mentioned by name. The pro-gramme that was mentioned most often in both countries was Alarm 911.Among the films mentioned were James Bond films, Tarzan films, JurassicPark and Psycho. All in all the children in Finland mentioned 28 differentadult or older children’s programmes, in Estonia the corresponding figurewas 17. There were frightening elements in children’s television pro-grammes too, but overall cartoons, animated films and other programmes forchildren were regarded as frightening far less often than programmes andfilms for adults which involved a lot of violence. Television programmeswere the top rated fear among children in Finland, and one of the top threefears in Estonia (Table 2). Fearfulness relating to television was higheramong Finnish children than among Estonian children (Table 3).
The fear of minor injuries (e.g. falling and hurting oneself) and thefear of accidents (e.g. fires, getting killed) were also typical among theseyoung children (Table 2), showing no cultural differences (Table 3).
Fears related to strange people were among the top 10 fears in bothcountries. People who behaved in a threatening or abnormal way, forinstance people who were drunk or who stared or spoke in a loud voice,were particularly frightening. Many children also said they were afraid of‘burglars’, ‘rapists’ or other ‘bad’ or ‘criminal’ people. For instance:
Child: And I’m also afraid that sometimes there are drunks at the supermarket. Interviewer: Why are you afraid of them? Child: Well, because they are so drunk . . . that they speak so loud and do otherthings. (Girl, 6 years old, Finland)
Estonian children expressed more fears of this kind (Table 3), and they alsoappear higher up in their ranking list than in the case of Finnish children(Table 2). Fears of being alone and getting lost ranked last in the top 10 listsin both countries.
Fears appearing in the top 10 lists of only one or the other countrywere the fear of darkness and dark places and the fear of nightmares (Finnishsample), and the fear of losing a loved one and the fear of new things andsituations (Estonian sample). Nightmares ranked fourth in the Finnish chil-dren’s list (Table 2), and the intensity of this fear was significantly higher inFinland than in Estonia (Table 3). Although many of the Estonian childrenalso said they had had nightmares, they did not say they were frightening. In
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both countries, the children managed to recall their dreams unexpectedlywell. The fear of losing a loved one and the fear of new things or situationswere very significantly higher among children in Estonia than in Finland(Table 3).
Other important fears outside the top 10 lists included the following:fear of the behaviour of peers (e.g. fights with other children at the daycarecentre or with siblings at home), fear of the behaviour of significant adults(e.g. parents’ violent behaviour, quarrels between parents, or getting pun-ished by parents), fear of war or guns, medical fears, fear of traffic accidents,fear of going to sleep and fear of thunderstorms.
Finnish and Estonian children’s fears according to the picture-aidedinterviewThe overall fearfulness expressed in the picture-aided interview differed sig-nificantly between the two countries, with the Estonian children showinggreater fearfulness than Finnish children (average score in Finland 14.4, inEstonia 15.6, F = 7.3; p = .007). The children found most of the situationspresented to them very frightening, and these fears are rank ordered in a verysimilar way in Finland and in Estonia. Table 4 shows that getting lost in theforest, going to bed in the dark and parents leaving for a long trip were thethree most common fears in both countries.
A similar country difference as was detected in the semi-structuredinterviews can also be seen in the picture-aided part. The common fears ofdarkness and nightmares in Finland are reflected in the higher percentage ofthose saying they are very afraid of going to bed in the dark in the Finnishsample (Table 5). The more prevalent fear of losing a loved one among theEstonian children in the semi-structured interviews is reflected here in the
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Table 4 Ten most common fears of 5- to 6-year-old Finnish and Estonian childrenreported in the picture-aided interviews (percentages indicating they are afraid ‘a lot’)
Finnish Estonian
Item description (%) Item description (%)
Getting lost in the forest 63.3 Getting lost in the forest 51.3
Going to bed in the dark 54.7 Going to bed in the dark 46.1
Parents leaving for a long trip 33.0 Parents leaving for a long trip 42.6
Parents criticizing me 33.0 Getting lost surrounded by
strange people 33.9
Going to the doctor 31.8 Parents criticizing me 31.3
Getting lost surrounded by
strange people 27.4 Going to the doctor 25.2
Having my parents argue 15.7 Having my parents argue 18.3
Being teased 8.9 Being teased 12.2
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higher percentages of those who are afraid of parents leaving for a trip(Table 5). Also, in line with the differences observed in the semi-structuredinterviews for the fear of new situations and things, Estonian childrenexpressed more fear in the picture-aided part than did Finnish children ofgetting lost among strange people.
Children in both countries found being teased by another child theleast frightening of all eight situations (Table 4). Estonian children were sig-nificantly more afraid than Finnish children of being teased, parents’ quar-rels and parents’ criticism (Table 5). Children in both countries found gettinglost in the forest and going to the doctor equally frightening.
Gender differences in fearsBoys and girls showed very similar patterns in reporting fears. The only sig-nificant difference was that boys in Estonia expressed higher levels of med-ical fears in the semi-structured interviews than did Estonian girls (girls: χ2 =.07, boys: χ2 = .37; F = 7.60, p < .01). The picture-aided interview revealedno gender differences between Finnish or Estonian children’s fears.
Discussion
Comparing the results with earlier researchOur results show both similarities and differences with the findings of earlierresearch. Two reservations need to be made at the outset of this discussion.First, different researchers and research teams have used different methodsin their work, and it is impossible to know how this has affected the results.Second, different methods have also been used in studying the fears ofyoung children and school-aged children (except Bauer, 1976), which makescomparisons of different age groups problematic.
Gender differences and cultural differencesMost previous studies have shown that there are clear gender differenceswith respect to fearfulness: girls are more fearful than boys. In children over7, gender differences have been demonstrated regardless of the method used,but in children under 7 years only when parents have been used as infor-mants (Bouldin and Pratt, 1998; Burnham and Gullone, 1997; Davidson etal., 1990; Elbedour et al., 1997; Gullone and King, 1992; King et al., 1989,1994; Muris et al., 1997a, 1997b; Ollendick et al., 1985, 1991; Owen, 1998;Ramirez and Kratochwill, 1997). Using children as informants, both Lentz(1985a, 1985b) and Bauer (1976) found that boys and girls aged 5–6 hadvery similar kinds of fears. The only difference observed by Lentz was thatgirls were more afraid of bodily injury than boys. Our own results lend sup-port to these findings. It seems that cultural role expectations have no signi-ficant impact on children before 7 or 8 years of age.
In line with many earlier investigations (Burnham and Gullone, 1997;
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Elbedour et al., 1997; Gullone and King, 1992; King et al., 1989; Ollendicket al., 1989, 1991), we found in this study that children in different countrieshave very similar fears. Any country differences that do exist are a matter ofquantity or intensity rather than quality. Nevertheless, when the quantitativedifferences are put together, a different gestalt of a qualitative characteremerges reflecting cultural features peculiar to these countries. Questions ofcultural impact will be discussed in closer detail in a later article.
The ranking order of the 10 major fears expressed by the young chil-dren in this study shows some similarities with the corresponding lists forschool-aged children based on the FSSC-R method. These studies have con-sistently found that most fears at school age are related to physical injuryand death, the most common fears being not being able to breathe, being hitby a car or truck, bombing attacks, getting burned by fire and falling from ahigh place (e.g. King et al., 1989; Muris et al., 1997a, 1997b; Ollendick etal., 1985, 1991; Owen, 1998). Although fear of danger and death were notmentioned very often in our semi-structured interviews, the picture-aidedinterview produced high ratings for the fears of getting lost surrounded bystrange people and in the forest, which belong to fear of danger and death inthe factor analytical patterns found by the FSSC-R method (e.g. Ollendick,1983). Fears of minor injuries and accidents were also among the top 10fears of children in both countries.
Our children expressed many fears related to social relations, especial-ly in the picture-aided interview. The frequency of fears related to close fam-ily relationships reflects the dependence of young children on their parentsand their high vulnerability in close family relations. Children rarely men-tioned fears related to separation or close human relations in the semi-struc-tured interviews, but the picture-aided interview revealed that these are verycommon fears among children of this age.
Many children’s fears relate to their concrete immediate environment.As has been reported in many earlier studies (e.g. Elbedour et al., 1997;King et al., 1994; Lentz, 1985a; Muris et al., 1997a, 1997b), we found thatfears of animals are very common among children. The frequency of fears ofimaginary creatures in early childhood has also been documented in earlierresearch (Bauer, 1976; Draper and James, 1985; Lentz, 1985a). It is worthmentioning that the children generally knew that imaginary creatures or ani-mals do not really exist: they can make the crucial distinction between fanta-sy and reality (on the cognitive level), but this does not necessarily reducetheir fearfulness. As a 6-year-old Estonian girl said: ‘I know that ghosts don’texist. But I can’t help it, when I’m all alone at home in the evening, I hearghosts upstairs.’
Fears of unfamiliar animals are one example of children’s powerfulimagination, which they use to process experiences that are difficult to artic-ulate otherwise. Of course, the distinction between familiar and unfamiliaranimals is somewhat artificial and open to interpretation. For instance, bears
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and wolves are found in Estonian and Finnish forests, but it is likely thatfrom a young child’s point of view they are just as ‘imaginary’ as lions,tigers, etc. Children only know them through stories and television pro-grammes. An Estonian boy who was very good at generalizing things sum-marized his thoughts about fearful animals as follows: ‘I’m afraid of allkinds of animals: male animals for three points, female animals for twopoints and young ones for one point.’
The interviews in this study made it clear that from time to time, reali-ty and fantasy are confused in the child’s mind. The virtual world of televi-sion in particular feeds the child’s imagination, and things seen on televisionoften turn into frightening illusions in the child’s imagination:
Child 1: There was on TV . . . a werewolf . . . a girl and a man, and every timethey went to a cellar they turned into werewolves . . . and then I started to thinkthat there was a werewolf in mum and dad’s closet . . . and I was so scared . . . Ilooked away, I didn’t want to look there at all. (Girl, 6 years old, Finland)
Child 2: I’m afraid when they show in the news . . . starving people. I’m alwaysafraid that it could happen to us . . . my family. That would be so awful. (Girl, 6years old, Finland)
Children’s affective reactions to frightening television programmes are notalways easy to predict from an adult’s perspective (Cantor and Hoffner,1990). The children were often fascinated by frightening programmes andthey could enjoy the excitement and fear aroused by them, but the boundarybetween enjoyable feelings of excitement and unpleasant feelings of fearwas often obscure.
Child: Psycho . . . it was terrible . . . and it was awfully long . . . Interviewer: What did you do when you were scared? Child: (with enthusiasm in his voice) Nothing. I just looked more and more andmore . . . (Boy, 5 years old, Finland)
It is quite clear that television is an important indirect source of other fears,for instance nightmares, darkness, imaginary creatures, unfamiliar animalsand accidents and death. In some cases the content of children’s nightmaresoriginated from a television programme, and seeing fires on television, forexample, made them fear that fire might destroy their own home. The capac-ity of television programmes to produce nightmares and other emotional dis-turbances has been documented earlier (e.g. Cantor, 1991).
Our interviews showed that television has a major impact on youngchildren’s fears. Nearly everything shown on television (news, family series,documents, etc.) are potential sources of fears, at least for young children.On this basis there is good reason to ask whether survey techniques likeFSSC should not give this topic more attention. The FSSC-R list includesonly one item concerning television-related fears, namely ‘mystery movies’,which is not usually among the 10 most common fears of (school-aged) children. It is also possible that studies using the FSSC-R or other survey
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schedules do not identify the typical and unique fears of young children, butmainly reveal such fears that the adult investigator assumes children have.
So, young children have many global and unrealistic fears of imagi-nary creatures and animals, nightmares, etc., whereas more specific and real-istic fears involving bodily injury and physical danger, for example, aremore common among older children (see also Bauer, 1976; Burnham andGullone, 1997; Elbedour et al., 1997; Muris et al., 1997a, 1997b). Bauer(1976) has suggested that children’s fears reflect the succession of changesin their perception of reality, from lack of differentiation to increased differ-entiation of internal from objective reality, and greater separation of fantasyfrom reality in perceptual processes. It has also been argued that moreabstract and future-oriented fears and fears associated with interpersonalrelations, personal safety and social concerns develop only later, during theschool years (Murphy, 1985; Ollendick et al., 1985). The children in our pro-ject seemed to be conscious of these kinds of fears, too, and the methods weused were good enough for these to be expressed.
It seems that basic fears in both countries are typical of the age groupand therefore independent of culture. Both interview methods also revealsystematic cultural differences between Estonian and Finnish children thathave to do with children’s relationships both to significant others and tostrangers. In our forthcoming analysis these differences are connected to anexamination of children’s living conditions in their respective countries.
Differences between methodsIn the semi-structured interviews the children mentioned a huge array offears. However, in both countries the picture-aided interview revealed higherlevels of fearfulness than did the semi-structured interview, although nomore than eight topics were presented in the pictures. This may be due toseveral factors. The topic itself is highly sensitive and even adults may havedifficulties speaking freely about their fears to a strange person. It is hard forchildren to articulate their fears, and they become easily tired. Because oftheir shorter time perspective, children will probably only be able to expresstheir most acute fears. Fears such as losing a loved one or being left alone,that are difficult for young children to verbalize or to express emotionally,were much less common in the semi-structured interview than in the picture-aided section. Success in communicating these fears depends on each child’scognitive capacities and on the interviewer’s skills in semi-structured inter-viewing. However, there were a number of children who did communicatefears which required both cognitive skills (fear of parents’ death and beingleft alone as a consequence, doing well at school in the future) and trust inthe interviewer (father’s drinking, punishments by parents). The most obvi-ous advantage of the semi-structured interview was its ability to reveal anumber of new fears, such as those related to television.
Many of the social fears represented in the picture-aided interview are
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precisely such fears that are hard for children to recognize and verbalize, andalso to communicate to an adult they have never met before. The time per-spective of young children is largely restricted to the concrete present, andtherefore the actuality of the fear plays an important role in the interview.Iconic representation makes all fears equally salient to young children and inthis way helps them to talk about more remote fears as well. It was encour-aging that the picture-aided interview revealed fears that remained hidden inthe semi-structured interviews.
Our results suggest that the interview method can be successfully usedwith young children to produce new information about their fears, though itdoes require careful planning and implementation. Discussions with youngchildren give us a more detailed and comprehensive picture of fears inyoung children than any other technique used earlier. The combination of asemi-structured interview, iconic representation and the CGRS was success-ful. However, neither of the interview methods used on its own produces arepresentative picture of the fears really harboured by children. A combina-tion of these two methods, on the other hand, does seem to be a very power-ful tool in a study of young children’s fears. On the strength of this evidence,there is clearly good reason to continue work to further develop both theseinterview methods.
Limitations and suggestions for further developmentInterviewing children involves some ethical questions that require furtherdiscussion. The promise of confidentiality is essential in creating a consen-sual relationship between the interviewer and the child. We treated childrenwith the same respect as we accord adult informants. However, there stillremains the risk of a conflict of solidarity with the parent. This was avoidedby allowing both the child and the parent to choose whether or not the parentwas present in the interview. No child was interviewed in circumstances thatwere against the child’s or the parent’s will. Most parents cooperated bymotivating the child before the interview, but their presence was exceptional.We anticipated that our children might reveal events requiring child protec-tion intervention, such as child abuse or incest. However no alarming caseswere found. Our responsibility as researchers was limited to the obligationnot to cause any harm or to complicate the child’s position in any way. If wehad found child protection cases we would have sought legal advice.
The semi-structured interview is an extremely expensive and time-consuming method to be used with young children. It also places greatdemands on interviewers, who must be balanced personalities, both at easewith themselves, and flexible and tolerant with children. They also need toreceive special training for the job, including a brief treatment of their ownchildhood fears, an introduction to the interview technique and follow-up ofthe interview process. Often the interview requires intense concentration onthe part of the interviewer, who must show attentive responsiveness and a
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real interest in listening to the child. The interview is certainly facilitated ifthe contact is otherwise assured, for instance when the interview is carriedout as part of an ethnographic study. Nonetheless, in spite of all these reser-vations, interviews with children are an excellent way of getting closer tochildren’s own experiences of their life and their ways of constructing it inwords.
The picture-aided interview is a relatively easy method for both theinterviewer and the child, being less time consuming than the semi-struc-tured interview. The development of a more extensive fear inventory is rec-ommended with special consideration given to the analysis of the pictures tobe included. In particular, the pictures may serve as a way of studying thosefears that are emotionally difficult to express and to verbalize. The use ofearlier fear research (Ollendick, 1983) is crucial in seeking to gain as good atheoretical coverage of the pictures as possible. It is important to note that itis not possible to construct an iconic inventory that is representative of allfears. The pictures used must be neutral and easy to understand. They shouldnot contain anything that in itself is threatening. We have not looked into thequestion of how far our results have been affected by the way the pictureshave been drawn.
Notes
This study is part of a research project on ‘Insecurity: Its Causes and Coping Strategies’, coor-dinated by the Department of Social Sciences, University of Kuopio, Finland. The purpose ofthe project is to describe and compare forms of insecurity and coping with insecurity in differ-ent age groups and in different countries.
1. In connection with each fear the extent of fear and the coping process was analysed byasking, ‘What do you do when you are afraid?’
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