Stage Fright Scale – Children & Youth: Development and Validation of a New Questionnaire.

This article focuses on the development and validation of the Stage Fright Scale – Children & Youth (SFS-CY), a questionnaire designed to measure stage fright—performance anxiety experienced before public speaking—in children and adolescents aged 8 to 17. Grounded in a three-factor theoretical framework encompassing somatic symptoms, cognitive states, and emotions, the study confirmed the scale's reliability and validity through confirmatory factor analysis and correlations with established measures of anxiety, neuroticism, and coping strategies. The SFS-CY addresses a gap in existing tools, which primarily target adult musicians and do not adequately capture stage fright in younger populations or in non-musical public speaking contexts. The authors highlight the importance of assessing and monitoring stage fright in educational settings to support children's mental health and communication skills development.