Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Jul 19, 2025; 15(7): 107446
Published online Jul 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i7.107446
Correlation between anxiety scores and academic performance among adolescent schoolchildren in Northern Sudan: A cross-sectional study
Hiba Elhag, Ahmed A Hassan, Hatim Y Alharbi, Ishag Adam
Hiba Elhag, Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, Khartoum 11111, Sudan
Ahmed A Hassan, Department of Medicine, University of Khartoum, Khartoum 11111, Sudan
Hatim Y Alharbi, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Qassim University, Buraydah 52389, Qassim, Saudi Arabia
Ishag Adam, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, Qassim University, Buraydah 52389, Qassim, Saudi Arabia
Author contributions: Elhag H and Hassan AA performed the data analysis; Elhag H and Adam I conceived the study; Hassan AA, Alharbi HY and Adam I supervised the clinical work; all authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This work was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The study received approval from the ethical board of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, Sudan.
Informed consent statement: All students and their guardians signed an informed consent form. The authors ensured that protocols protecting all students’ privacy, safety, and confidentiality were strictly followed and that personal identifiers during data collection were excluded.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflict of interest in publishing the manuscript.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hatim Y Alharbi, MD, Affiliate Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Qassim University, 3320 Abu Baker as Siddiq Road, Buraydah 52389, Qassim, Saudi Arabia. hy.alharbi@qu.edu.sa
Received: March 25, 2025
Revised: April 15, 2025
Accepted: May 13, 2025
Published online: July 19, 2025
Processing time: 108 Days and 3.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This cross-sectional study was carried out during the 2021/2022 academic year among schoolchildren in River Nile State, Northern Sudan. A questionnaire was used to collect the participants’ sociodemographic data. Anxiety levels were assessed using the questionnaire tools of the General Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale. Students’ academic performance scores were obtained from school records. In multivariate linear analysis, after controlling for age, sex, parental education, occupation, and body mass index-Z-score, anxiety scores were positively associated with academic performance scores (coefficient = 0.60, P value < 0.001).