Birth cohort changes of Chinese adolescents’ anxiety: A cross-temporal meta-analysis, 1992–2005

With the dramatic changes of Chinese society, Chinese adolescents’ average anxiety levels might also have changed across their birth cohorts. The present cross-temporal meta-analysis (40 studies, 21,217 12 to 17-year-old students) found that Chinese adolescents’ scores on the Self-rating Anxiety Scale increased at least 0.7 standard deviations from 1992 to 2005. Their anxiety was directly correlated with some negative social indicators (e.g., Gini coefficient, divorce rate, unemployment rate, and crime rate) for the corresponding years, 5 years prior, or 10 years prior to the anxiety data collection. Among the three matching cases, the social indicators of 5 years prior were most strongly correlated with anxiety. It is evident that social changes played an important role in predicting the anxiety changes.