title: The development of the Adolescent Nervios Scale: preliminary findings.
abstract: This paper details the construction of a scale to measure the culture-bound syndrome of nervios in Latino early adolescents, ages 11 to 14. Informed by nervios literature and experts, we developed the 31-item Adolescent Nervios Scale (ANS) with items comprised of symptoms representing various psychiatric conditions common to Western culture. In contrast to 277 non-Latino early adolescents who responded to the items as representing disparate constructs, 307 Latino early adolescents responded to ANS items in a unitary fashion. For Latino early adolescents, the ANS demonstrated good internal consistency and stability as well as concurrent, discriminative, and criterion-based validity. The results support the measurement of nervios and its relationship to the school performance and adjustment of Latino youth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).
authors.affiliation: Educational Psychology, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, NY 11201-5372, USA. Andrew.Livanis@liu.edu
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Livanis
authors.forename: Georgiana Shick
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Tryon
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012917:Social Adjustment