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    Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) : Validity and Reliability

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    e_nov78
    The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) is a 45-item self-report questionnaire that assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms in children aged 8-15. It measures six domains of anxiety: separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive compulsive problems, panic/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and fears of physical injury. Higher total and subscale scores indicate greater anxiety severity. The scale has demonstrated validity and reliability in differentiating clinically anxious children from non-clinical controls. It can be used to evaluate the impact of anxiety interventions over time.

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    Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) : Validity and Reliability

    Uploaded by

    e_nov78
    269 views3 pages
    The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) is a 45-item self-report questionnaire that assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms in children aged 8-15. It measures six domains of anxiety: separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive compulsive problems, panic/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and fears of physical injury. Higher total and subscale scores indicate greater anxiety severity. The scale has demonstrated validity and reliability in differentiating clinically anxious children from non-clinical controls. It can be used to evaluate the impact of anxiety interventions over time.

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    Spence Children

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    The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) is a 45-item self-report questionnaire that assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms in children aged 8-15. It measures six domains of anxiety: separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive compulsive problems, panic/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and fears of physical injury. Higher total and subscale scores indicate greater anxiety severity. The scale has demonstrated validity and reliability in differentiating clinically anxious children from non-clinical controls. It can be used to evaluate the impact of anxiety interventions over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    269 views3 pages

    Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) : Validity and Reliability

    Uploaded by

    e_nov78
    The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child (SCAS-Child) is a 45-item self-report questionnaire that assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms in children aged 8-15. It measures six domains of anxiety: separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive compulsive problems, panic/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and fears of physical injury. Higher total and subscale scores indicate greater anxiety severity. The scale has demonstrated validity and reliability in differentiating clinically anxious children from non-clinical controls. It can be used to evaluate the impact of anxiety interventions over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale –

    Child (SCAS-Child)
    The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale – Child is a 45-item self-report scale used to
    assess severity of anxiety symptoms in children aged 8-15 years. The SCAS-Child
    assesses six domains of anxiety which constitute six subscales:

     Separation Anxiety
     Social Phobia
     Obsessive Compulsive Problems
     Panic/Agoraphobia
     Generalised Anxiety/Overanxious Symptoms
     Fears of Physical Injury

    The SCAS-Child can be used as part of a broader diagnostic assessment, but should
    not be used as the sole means for diagnosis. The scale can be used in clinical and non-
    clinical settings to evaluate the impact of anxiety interventions over time.

    There is also a parent reported version (SCAS-Parent) of the same assessment.


    Administering the child and parent reported version and comparing results can be
    helpful to inform a formulation.

    Validity and Reliability


    The SCAS Child Version has been validated in a sample of Australian children (N =
    218) by Spence (1998). The SCAS demonstrated convergent validity with other
    measures of child anxiety, and discriminant validity with a measure of child
    depressive symptoms. The same study also showed significantly higher SCAS scores
    on all six subscales among clinically anxious children than those in a non-clinical
    control group.

    For comprehensive information visit the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale website
    at: www.scaswebsite.com

    Scoring and Interpretation


    Scores consist of a total raw score (range from 0 to 114) and six sub-scale scores,
    with higher scores indicating greater severity of anxiety symptoms. These scores are
    also converted into percentiles based on age and gender from normative samples
    reported on www.scaswebsite.com. A percentile score more than 84 for any subscale
    score or the total SCAS score indicates clinically significant anxiety symptoms.

    Sub-scales are computed by summing the following items:

     Separation anxiety (items 5, 8, 12, 15, 16, 44)


     Social phobia (items 6, 7, 9, 10, 29, 35)
     Obsessive compulsive (items 14, 19, 27, 40, 41, 42)
     Panic/agoraphobia (items 13, 21, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37, 39)
     Physical Injury (items 2, 18, 23, 25, 33)
     Generalised anxiety (items 1, 3, 4, 20, 22, 24)

    Items that are not scored in either the total score or the sub-scale scores are:
    11, 17, 26, 31, 38, 43, 45 and 46. They are not scored because they did not meet
    sufficient psychometric requirements.

    If the scale is administered on multiple occasions a graph is produced to track


    symptoms over time, representing  the respondents scores as a normative
    percentile.  

    Developer
    Spence, S.H. (1997). Structure of anxiety symptoms among children: A confirmatory
    factor-analytic study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(2), 280-297.

    References
    Spence, S.H. (1998). A measure of anxiety symptoms among children. Behaviour
    Research and Therapy, 36 (5), 545-566.
    Spence, S.H., Barrett, P.M., & Turner, C.M. (2003). Psychometric properties of the
    Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale with young adolescents. Journal of Anxiety
    Disorders, 17(6), 605-625.

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