Psychometric Properties of the Bulgarian Translation of the Spence Childrens Anxiety Scale

Ivelina Tsocheva Satoko Sasagawa

doi:10.4172/2329-9525.1000101

Abstract

The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Bulgarian translation of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) in a community sample of adolescents (N=700), aged 13 to 17 years, in Bulgaria. In addition to the SCAS, all participants completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC). The internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha=0.92) and the validity of the Bulgarian translation of the SCAS was excellent. The SCAS total scores correlated significantly with the CES-DC and the SDQ total scores. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed the same six-factor structure as the original SCAS. The SCAS proved to be a reliable and valid measure of anxiety symptoms among adolescents in Bulgaria.

Highlights

Anxiety disorder is a common disorder in adolescence with prevalence rates ranging from 15-31.9% [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
Studies conducted among adolescents in Western industrialized countries have indicated that anxiety disorder is associated with psychosocial impairment in various life domains, in social and academic domains [4,10]
The analyses yielded a main effect of the gender for total Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) score, (F (1, 699)=110.27, p

Summary

Introduction

Anxiety disorder is a common disorder in adolescence with prevalence rates ranging from 15-31.9% [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Given the advantages of self-report questionnaires, numerous self-report screenings for the assessment of anxiety symptoms (e.g., Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised [12]; the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale [13]; State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children [14]) in children and adolescents have been developed over the past decades. While these questionnaires have sound psychometric properties, they cannot be used to measure symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders. An exception is the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale [15,16]

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Conclusion