Gender differences in children’s fears: A meta-analysis study

ABSTRACT

Children’s fears have received scholarly attention for well over 50 years. A considerable amount of literature has focused on such fear variables as fear intensity and fear prevalence scores and age and gender differences. We used meta-analysis to systematically review the findings related to gender differences in children’s fear intensity scores and fear prevalence scores and to examine the moderator effect of sample, year of study, and type of instrument on gender differences. Research studies that used the Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC) or an updated version of the FSSC, were included in this meta-analysis. The findings from 58 intensity and 17 prevalence studies suggest that females have 11.4% higher total fear scores than males and females have 7.2% more fears than males. Results of sub-group analyses indicate that moderator variables of sample, year of publication, and type/version of FSSC cause significant variability in gender differences.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• fear
• children’s fears
• Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC)
• meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Mendeley at http://doi.org/10.17632/2k59gk7zwy.2

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Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Tolga Erdogan

Tolga Erdoğan is an Associate Professor of Educational Sciences at TED University, Faculty of Education in Turkey. His academic interest areas are constructivist teaching and learning, self-regulation, metacognition, learner/learning friendly environments, testing and evaluation, and instructional technologies. He has over 12 journal articles published in international and national indexes, 2 national and international book chapters and he has presented several papers at international meetings.

Begum Serim-Yildiz

Begüm Serim-Yıldız received her Ph.D. degree in Psychological Counseling and Guidance from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. She is currently an Assistant Professor at TED University. Dr Serim-Yıldız's principal research interests is fears of children and adolescents. She has a 15-year experience with children and adolescents and is currently studying on subjects such as emotion regulation of youth, ethical decision making in counseling, counseling with children and adolescents.

Joy J. Burnham

Dr. Joy J. Burnham is Professor in Counselor Education in the Department of Educational Studies, Psychology, Research, Methodology, and Counseling. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Alabama and a National Certified Counselor (NCC). While Dr. Burnham's primary research focus has been on children's fears, her research agenda also includes school counseling-related topics, and the tenure and promotion process. She has published 49 peer-reviewed journal articles. She has co-authored one book, Tools for Dossier Success: A Guide for Tenure and Promotion.

Stefanie A. Wind

Stefanie A. Wind is an Associate Professor of Educational Measurement at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include the exploration of methodological issues in educational measurement, with emphases on rating scales, parametric and nonparametric item response theory, and applications of these methods to substantive areas related to education. Dr. Wind has published her research in methodological journals in the field of educational measurement (e.g., Journal of Educational Measurement, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Applied Psychological Measurement) as well as applied journals (e.g., Language Testing, Assessing Writing, Science Educatio).