Negative Life Events, Social Support, and Self-Efficacy in Anxious Adolescents

Purpose: To examine the prevalence and correlates of anxiety in a community sample of adolescents. Knowing the prevalence and characteristics of anxious adolescents is valuable to improve anxiety prevention strategies and interventions. Design: Cross-sectional data about anxiety were collected via a school survey from a community sample of Norwegian adolescents aged 12-17 (N = 1719). Methods: Based on scores from the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, the adolescents were categorized as not anxious or anxious. Logistic regression analysis was performed to access the impact of each factor on the likelihood that participants would report an elevated level of anxiety. Results: A total of 22% of the adolescents were categorized as anxious. Female gender, experienced negative life events, low social support, and low self-efficacy were associated with elevated level of anxiety. Conclusions: The high prevalence of anxiety in adolescents demonstrates the importance of improved prevention interventions targeting anxious adolescents. We argue that addressing is the responsibility of not only the individual adolescents and their families but also schools, school health services, and policy makers. School-based interventions that increase social support and self-efficacy would probably be particularly beneficial for anxious adolescents.