Abstract:

The aim of the present study was to analyse cultural differences in school anxiety scores among middle and high school Spanish, French, Portuguese and Chinese students.

The School Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ; García-Fernández & Inglés, 2007) was administered to 1,439 students from Grades 7 to 12 (12 to 18 years old). The Spanish sample consisted of 364 middle and high school students, the French sample consisted of 379 middle and high school students, the Portuguese sample consisted of 325 middle and high school students, and the Chinese sample consisted of 371 middle and high school students.

The SAQ measures seven factors: four school situations (Anxiety faced with School Failure and Punishment, Anxiety faced with Aggression, Anxiety faced with Social Evaluation, and Anxiety faced with School Evaluation), and three anxiety response systems (cognitive, physiological, and behaviour). It also provides a global score of school anxiety.

ANOVA analyses were used to determine if there were differences among those samples in the school anxiety scores. Once the differences were obtained, post-hoc analysis (Scheffe test) were performed to determine between which countries appeared the differences. Furthermore effect size (d index) was used to set the magnitude of these differences.

Results showed that Chinese students had higher global school anxiety than Spanish, French and Portuguese samples, being these differences statistically significant.
Chinese students also presented highest scores than Spanish, French and Portuguese in the seven factors measured by the SAQ.

On the other hand, Spanish students presented higher scores than French and Portuguese sample in three of the four school situations evaluated (Anxiety faced with School Failure and Punishment, Anxiety faced with Aggression and Anxiety faced with School Evaluation) and in the three response systems (cognitive, physiological, and behaviour).

The results showed transnational differences in school anxiety, specially, in the chinese sample. Chinese students have scores much higher than the other countries evaluated.

Keywords:

school anxiety, cultural differences, adolescents.