Second Edition Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS-2)
In this study, the Second Edition Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS-2) will be used to assess participants’ levels of anxiety after each weekly assessment. Bert Richmond and Cecil Reynolds created the RCMA-2. It is useful in bringing into focus the invisible stress, worry, and fear that children often try their best to conceal. While they conceal their anxiety through silence and compliance with teachers and parents, their academics and social development are often harmed. They begin to struggle in their studies, and consequently withdraw from social interactions and can end up abusing substances.
The properties that have made the scale acceptable in the psychological analysis are its brevity, simplicity, and its target population – the elementary reading level, its focus on content-based items to identify problems, and its focus on intervention. The updated version of the scale includes a short form, which incorporates norms of ethnic diversity. Of most importance is that the scale is up to date based on the way children’s way of experiencing anxiety has changed today.
The scale is a self-generated report. It takes account of the nature and level of the anxiety a child has. It is designed for use in 6 to 19 year-olds and covers 49 items. The items’ content includes social anxiety, worry, physiological Anxiety, inconsistent responding index, and defensiveness. The social anxiety consists of ten items that evaluate the anxiety due to performance. It addresses the changes in children’s experience of anxiety. Most children today experience the pressure to achieve both socially and academically. Students with learning disabilities, on the other hand, are more susceptible to this kind of anxiety because of their condition. Therefore, the research will be evaluating the identified population of thirty students with learning disabilities to determine their anxiety levels when technology is incorporated in their intervention, and when assessments are paper-based. The RCMAS-2 will be used in monitoring the stress these children will experience, and the comparison and conclusion made.
Patricia Lowe 2014 studied the psychometric characteristics of the RCMAS-2 amongst United States secondary and elementary school students. The examination involved 1003 students from both levels of education, and it used confirmatory factor analysis to compare the target model—the model, which includes two defensiveness factors and three anxiety factors. The investigations done found that the five-factor model (the two defensiveness factors, worry, social anxiety, physiological anxiety), offered gave better results compared to the previous model that consisted of three factors. The researcher also tested measurement invariance and the outcome supported metric and configure invariance of the scale’s score across gender. The latent mean analysis found that females recorded higher scores on anxiety factors compared to their male counterparts. Overall, the results supported the construct validity of the RCMAS-2 scores (Lowe, 2014).
In a study of reliability, Ang, Lowe, and Yusof 2011 investigated several factors related to the RCMAS0-2. They examined the discriminant validity, reliability, convergent, and the US norms of the scale in a sample 1618 Singapore school-going kids. There were a few statistically significant differences in the scores, but overall, the US norms proved to be sufficient for use in an Asian context. The bias analysis revealed some biases, but these were counterbalanced by ethnicity and gender factors making their effects minimum. The five-factor structure of the scale found in the US context was replicated in Singapore. Altogether, the results of the research provided evidence that the RCMAS-2 is appropriate and useful as a measure of anxiety even across cultures (Ang, Lowe & Yusof, 2011).
References
Ang, R. P., Lowe, P. A., & Yusof, N. (2011). An examination of the RCMAS-2 scores across gender, ethnic background, and age in a large Asian school sample. Psychological assessment, 23(4), 899.
Lowe, P. A. (2014). A closer look at the psychometric properties of the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale–Second Edition among US elementary and secondary school students. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 32(6), 495-508.