• C Meghan McMurtry, Melanie Noel, Christine T Chambers, and Patrick J McGrath.
• Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario. cmcmurtr@uoguelph.ca
• Health Psychol. 2011 Nov 1;30(6):780-8.

UnlabelledMany children consider getting a needle to be one of their most feared and painful experiences. Differentiating between a child's experience of fear and pain is critical to appropriate intervention. There is no gold standard one-item self-report measure of fear for use with children.ObjectiveTo conduct an initial investigation of the psychometric properties of the Children's Fear Scale (CFS; based on the adult Faces Anxiety Scale) with young school-age children.MethodChildren and their parents were filmed during venipuncture and completed pain and fear ratings immediately after the procedure (n = 100) and 2 weeks later (n = 48). Behavioral coding of the procedures was conducted.ResultsSupport was found for interrater reliability (Time 1: rs = .51, p < .001) and test-retest reliability (rs = .76, p < .001) of the CFS for measuring children's fear during venipuncture. Assessment of construct validity revealed high concurrent convergent validity with another self-report measure of fear (Time 1: rs = .73, p < .001) and moderate discriminant validity (e.g., Time 1: rs = -.30, p < .005 with child coping behavior; rs = .41, p < .001 with child distress behavior).ConclusionsThe CFS holds promise for measuring pain-related fear in children. In addition to further investigation into the psychometric properties of the CFS during acute pain with a wider age range, future research could validate this measure in other contexts. The utility of a one-item measure of fear extends beyond the field of pediatric pain to other contexts including intervention for anxiety disorders and children in hospital.PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

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