Studying Fears in Young Children: Two Interview Methods

The article introduces two interview methods for studying young children' fears, applied in separate studies with representative samples of children aged 5-6 in Finland (N = 222) and Estonia (N = 117). The semi-structured interview was based on the question, `What things are you afraid of?' The article describes the interview scheme as well as the interview process. The picture-aided interview was designed on the basis of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised (FSSC-R). The semistructured interviews showed that young children are capable of expressing a much wider range of fears (e.g. television programmes) than had been assumed earlier. The picture-aided interviews revealed more fears related to social relations than did the semi-structured interviews. Both methods are recommended for research use.