Childhood Anxiety Development: School-Based Wellbeing Interventions, Gender and Socioeconomic Disadvantage

This thesis explores how individual socioeconomic status (SES), low-income schooling, gender and school-based wellbeing interventions impact children’s anxiety levels, through a systematic literature review and an empirical quantitative study. The research was underpinned by a post-positivism epistemology and was guided by Bronfenbrenner’s PPCT Model and the developmental psychopathology framework. Findings from the systematic literature review were inconsistent as to how effective wellbeing interventions are at reducing the anxiety levels of children attending low-income schools, and also at whether any positive effects arising from engagement with wellbeing interventions are maintained in the long-term. In the empirical study, findings were that being female and reporting greater family affluence are risk factors for experiencing higher levels of anxiety, and wellbeing interventions interacted with socioeconomic status to reduce anxiety development for more affluent children. The research is important for educational psychological practice as it provides information on whether wellbeing interventions are a worthwhile initiative to help reduce the anxiety levels of children in middle childhood and those attending low-income schools, while it also helps to expand our knowledge of the factors which influence the development of anxiety.