Fears and Worries at Nighttime in Young Children: Development and Psychometric Validation of a Parent-Report Measure (FAWN-YC)

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Shiels, Amy
Uhlmann, Laura
Farrell, Lara J
Munro-Lee, Erinn
Donovan, Caroline L
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2024
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Abstract

This paper outlines the development and psychometric evaluation of the Fears and Worries at Nighttime—Young Children (FAWN-YC) scale; a parent-rated measure for children aged 3–5 years. Based on previous literature, it was hypothesised that the measure would be represented by a six-factor solution, with four clusters of fear types and two behavioural manifestations of fears. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA; N = 436) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; N = 383), resulted in a final 17 items that loaded onto 3 factors: Nighttime Fear Focus (8 items, α = 0.92), Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference (5 items, α = 0.90), and Dark Fear (4 items, α = 0.88). Evidence of convergent validity was found through strong associations between the total score and subscales of the FAWN-YC with measures of child anxiety, fear, sleep, externalizing and conduct problems. Furthermore, there was support for divergent validity (through a very weak to no relationship with a measure of prosocial behaviours), and evidence for temporal stability was also established with 2-week test–retest reliability. Overall, the results provide strong preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the FAWN-YC total score and subscales. Implications for the use of the measure in research and clinical practice are discussed.

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Child Psychiatry & Human Development

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© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advance online version.

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Clinical sciences

Applied and developmental psychology

Clinical and health psychology

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Shiels, A; Uhlmann, L; Farrell, LJ; Munro-Lee, E; Donovan, CL, Fears and Worries at Nighttime in Young Children: Development and Psychometric Validation of a Parent-Report Measure (FAWN-YC), Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 2024

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