School anxiety and school refusal due to tangible rewards outside the school context

Abstract

The prevalence of school refusal is increasing and there are risk factors mainly in the Hispanic population in relation to other ethnic groups. On the other hand, due to the high prevalence of cases of school anxiety in the student population, numerous investigations have been carried out worldwide, the purpose of which is to foresee dire future consequences in the professional lives of those involved. The main objective of this work is to know the differences in school anxiety based on high and low scores in factor IV “Search for tangible reinforcement outside the school environment” of the SRAS-R-C test. The sample was made up of 1920 students from 1st, 2nd and 3rd year of high school, aged 15 and 18, and enrolled in 3 public educational institutions in Ecuador. To achieve this
objective, the “School Refusal Assessment Scale Revised for Children” (SRAS-R-C) has been used, specifically the subscale that evaluates factor IV “Search for tangible reinforcement outside the school environment”, and the “School Anxiety Inventory” (IAES) to measure school anxiety during adolescence. The data analysis was conducted utilizing the Student’s t test. Students with low scores in Factor IV (search for tangible reinforcement outside the school environment) scored significantly higher in the FI IAES (Anxiety about aggression), FIII IAES (Anxiety
about school failure and disciplinary sanctions), A. PSIC. (Psychophysiological Anxiety), and A. WITH. (Behavioral Anxiety). These results reflect the need for future research framed in the variables proposed in the present study, that is, school rejection versus school anxiety to design intervention plans that prevent school rejection behavior due to the search for tangible reinforcements outside the school environment.