Paper Title
Gender Differences in Kosovo Children and Adolescents Among Somatic Complaints and Anxiety Symptoms

Abstract
Common anxiety is a feeling that comes and goes, but it does not interfere with our daily lives and the normal functioning of the body. Barlow (2002), defines anxiety as an emotional state where the person is ready to face the negative events that may come in the future. Anxiety symptoms are often manifested by emotional, cognitive, and somatic symptoms (Bressert, 2018). The biological basis of anxiety symptoms is associated with increased norepinephrine (noradrenaline) activity with the GABA neurotransmitter system (Gale & Browne, 2004). The main purpose and question in this research was to see what are the gender differences between Kosovar adolescents who experience somatic complaints and consequently exhibit symptoms of anxiety? In this study we recruited a total of 250 students of secondary schools to lower the various municipalities. The age of the participants varied from 11 to 14 years, including 7th and 8th grade students. 54.1% of the participants were boys and 45.3% girls. The data were obtained through self-reporting with the questionnaire The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is a list used to detect emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents. CBCL questions are related to syndrome-scale problems in the following categories: anxiety / depression, withdrawal / depression, somatic complaints, social problems, thought problems, attention problems, violent behavior, and aggressive behavior. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between somatic complaints and anxiety symptoms, r (306) = .44, p <.01. Also in the results of this research, we can see that there are gender differences in anxiety symptoms t (302) = -2.87, p = .004, with girls reporting more anxiety symptoms (4.9 ± 3.08) than boys (3.94 ± 2.7), but no gender differences were found in reporting somatic complaints t (301) = .20.208, p = .835. These research findings can help to better identify the contributing factors in the emergence of somatic and anxiety symptoms, as well as open the door to research into their intervention and prevention programs. Keywords - Anxiety, Anxiety Symptoms, Somatic Complaints, CBCL Questionnaire.