Factor Structure and Gender Invariance of the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS) in Middle School Students

Given the potential short and long-term consequences of math anxiety in children and adolescents, it is important to have psychometrically sound measures that assess math anxiety in this population. The purpose of the current study was to examine the factor structure and equivalence of the factor structure of the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS) in middle school girls and boys. Participants were 604 children recruited from two middle schools in Texas. A single-factor, two-factor, and bifactor model were tested using a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). A Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) was used to investigate whether the AMAS demonstrated measurement invariance across the sample of middle school girls and boys. The bifactor model provided an excellent fit and the best fit of the three models tested (CFI = .99, TLI = .99, SRMR = .02, RMSEA = .03). Results of the MGCFA supported configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the AMAS across middle school boys and girls. These results suggest that the AMAS demonstrates strong factorial invariance across gender for middle school students and can be used to assess potential differences in math anxiety between middle school girls and boys in an unbiased manner.