Development and Construct Validation of the Revised Spatial Anxiety Scale

Lyons et al. (2018) used exploratory factor analysis to develop and validate a spatial anxiety questionnaire that can reliably measure anxiety in situations that involve different types of spatial skills. Using the framework set forth by Uttal et al. (2013) for different types of spatial skills to inform their factor analysis, they were able to create an empirically validated Spatial Anxiety Scale incorporating three of the subtypes of spatial processing. This project developed and validated a revised spatial anxiety scale. In Study 1, expert reviews and cognitive interviews were used to establish substantive reliability for a revised spatial anxiety scale. Specifically, this study evaluated a total of 121 items pulled from the items proposed by Lyons et al. (2018), items from existing spatial anxiety scales (Lawton, 1994; Malanchini et al., 2017), and researcher- developed items. Based on these reviews and interviews, items were removed and the remaining 68 items were given to a pilot sample of 229 college students. To examine structural validity, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted, which provided evidence for the four-factor model as was theoretically expected consisting of 22 items. In Study 2, the revised spatial anxiety scale with additional items to examine structural validity were given to 201 college students alongside measures of subtypes of spatial skill and other covariates. We examined the relations between each subscale and measures of each spatial subdomain to assess external validity and results provide some mixed evidence for the external validity of the scale. In addition, another CFA was conducted that verified the factor structure found in Study 1. Overall, results of the present study suggest that spatial anxiety has a four-factor structure similar to spatial skill, in line with existing research (Uttal et al., 2013), and the revised spatial anxiety scale adequately captures that complexity.