The Problem of Anxiety in Connection with Investigations concerning Children's Conception of War and Peace

Ålvik, T. The problem of anxiety in connection with investigations concerning children's conception of war and peace. Scand. J. Ed. Res. 215‐233, 1968. The present article deals with the problem of whether or not anxiety is provoked in children when they are questioned about their conception of war and peace. The first part of the article is an introductory discussion and a literature survey where several views on this topic are presented. In the second part of the article two methods of registering variations in level of anxiety are presented. The second method, employing a four‐group pretest/posttest design, is considered the more efficient one. In the last part of the article, results obtained in an exploratory study employing the second method are presented and discussed. The conclusion is that questioning children about matters of war and peace does not seem to provoke anxiety on the part of the subjects. Because of the small number of subjects and the ad hoc instrument used, however, the conclusion must be considered a very tentative one. * The study from which this article is an excerpt was made possible by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities (NAVF) via the Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo. The author wishes to thank Professor Johs. Sandven of this Institute and his staff, as well äs the researchers at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) for help and encouragement. The present article deals with one of the problems taken up in the main study.