Abstract
The literature provides several examples of anxiety symptoms questionnaires for children. However, these questionnaires generally contain many items, and might not be ideal for screening in large populations, or repeated testing in clinical settings. The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) is an extensively used and evaluated 44-item questionnaire developed to assess anxiety symptoms in children, and provides a sound base for the development of an abbreviated anxiety symptoms questionnaire. Although methodological standards have been presented in how to develop abbreviated questionnaires, previous studies have often suffered from several limitations regarding validating procedures. Guided by these methodological standards, the current study aimed at developing an abbreviated version of the SCAS, while retaining the content, convergent, and divergent validity of the original scale. A school-based sample (n = 750) was used to reduce the number of items, and an independent school-based sample (n = 371) together with a clinical sample (n = 93), were used to validate the abbreviated scale. The abbreviated version of the SCAS contained 19 items, it showed a clear factor structure as evaluated in the independent sample, and it performed as good as the original questionnaire regarding classification accuracy, convergent, and divergent validity. In our view, the abbreviated version is a very good alternative to the original scale especially for younger children, in initial screening, or in order to reduce response burden.
Highlights
The literature provides several examples of anxiety symptoms questionnaires for children
Classification Accuracy In the interviewed subgroup of the School Sample 1 we examined the ability of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) total score, and the SCAS-S total score to classify children with or without any anxiety disorder
When we examined the correlation coefficients of the SCAS and the SCAS-S in regard to the association to overall clinician severity ratings, number of disorders, the SCAS-P, and the two Strength and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) subscales, we found no significant differences between the SCAS and the SCAS-S
Summary
The literature provides several examples of anxiety symptoms questionnaires for children These questionnaires generally contain many items, and might not be ideal for screening in large populations, or repeated testing in clinical settings. Methodological standards have been presented in how to develop abbreviated questionnaires, previous studies have often suffered from several limitations regarding validating procedures Guided by these methodological standards, the current study aimed at developing an abbreviated version of the SCAS, while retaining the content, convergent, and divergent validity of the original scale. The abbreviated version of the SCAS contained 19 items, it showed a clear factor structure as evaluated in the independent sample, and it performed as good as the original questionnaire regarding classification accuracy, convergent, and divergent validity. The abbreviated version is a very good alternative to the original scale especially for younger children, in initial screening, or in order to reduce response burden
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