ORIGINAL PAPER Anxiety Disorder Symptoms in Chinese Preschool Children Meifang Wang • Jinxia Zhao Published online: 26 March 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract The present study investigated anxiety disorder symptoms in Chinese preschool children. A total of 1,854 mothers of children aged 3–6 years completed the 28-item Chinese version of Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (PAS). Results demonstrated that the structure of anxiety in Chi- nese preschool children included five factors, and this five- factor structure applied to different age and gender groups. Inconsistent with the study by Edwards et al. (J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol 39:400–409, 2010) suggesting that obsessive–compulsive disorder did not comprise an inde- pendent factor in Australian preschoolers, this symptom can be viewed as an independent factor in Chinese pre- schoolers. Younger children displayed higher anxiety lev- els than older children. Anxiety symptoms of Chinese preschoolers were found at a high level compared to other studies. Substantial differences were found with regard to the content of prevalent anxiety symptoms among Chinese and Australian preschool children. The applicability of the five-factor structure of PAS and research implications are discussed. Keywords Anxiety Á Preschool children Á Preschool Anxiety Scale Á China Introduction In the past two decades, research efforts in childhood and adolescence anxiety disorders have greatly increased our understanding of anxiety in older children. However, we know relatively little about the anxiety problems in very young children [1, 2]. Research suggests that anxiety dis- orders have an early age of onset [3, 4], with prevalence rates around 9 % in preschool populations [1]. This prev- alence among young children is comparable to those reported for older children [5]. Meanwhile, preschool anxiety problems have demonstrated stability into mid- childhood and adolescence [6, 7], and are associated with future onset of other disorders like depression and conduct disorders [8–10]. These early-onset disorders may result in moderate to marked life impairment for young children if left untreated [4, 11]. All these findings highlight the importance of understanding and screening anxiety symp- toms in early childhood. Despite early onset and severity of anxiety disorders, it is rare that young children with anxiety problems receive appropriate care and treatment [1, 5]. One of the main barriers is the lack of reliable and valid instruments for assessing preschool anxiety. Thus, psychometrically sound instruments for identifying anxiety symptoms in early childhood are urgently needed. Currently, several measures such as the Child Behavior Checklist [12], the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire [13], and the Children’s Moods, Fears and Worries Questionnaire [6] are often used for assessing anxiety of preschool children. Although these measures possess adequate psychometric properties and provide valuable information on psychopathological symptoms of preschool children, they do not identify the specific anxiety symptoms. Instead, they tend to address more global aspects of internalizing behaviors, such as M. Wang (&) Á J. Zhao Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, No. 88 East Wenhua Road, Jinan 250014, People’s Republic of China e-mail: meifangw@hotmail.com; wangmf@sdnu.edu.cn J. Zhao Department of Education, Linyi University, Linyi, People’s Republic of China 123 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2015) 46:158–166 DOI 10.1007/s10578-014-0461-7