Analyzing the relationship between the anxiety and automatic thoughts of secondary school students

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the anxiety and automatic thoughts of secondary school students in the city of Malatya. Material and Method: This study was conducted with 1279 students who were attending secondary schools of the Ministry of Education in Malatya city center in the spring and fall terms of 2018-2019 school year. "Demographic Information Form", "State and Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children" and "Automatic Thought Scale of Children", which had been prepared by the researcher, were used as data collection tool. While t Test was used in the two groups of comparisons of the quantitative data indicating normal distribution, Mann Whitney U Test was used in the two groups of comparisons of the data not indicating normal distribution. In the comparisons of three and more groups indicating normal distribution, One-Way Anova Test was used, in dual comparisons, Bonferroni Test was used; in the comparisons of three and more groups not indicating normal distribution, Kruskal Wallis Test and in dual comparisons, Bonferroni-Dunn Test was used. In the evaluation of the relationship among variances, Spearman's Correlation Analysis was used for variances not indicating normal distribution. Findings: Difference was found between the anxiety and automatic thought scores in reference to variance in gender, age and grades. No difference was found between the anxiety and automatic thought scores in reference to monthly incomes of families. No difference was found between anxiety scores in reference to where the students live. However, differences were found between their automatic thought scores. Result: Positively and statistically meaningful medium-level relationship was found between the total points of students' automatic thought scale and their situational and constant anxiety score. Keywords: Child, situational anxiety, constant anxiety, automatic thoughts