The revised version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED--R): first evidence for its reliability and validity in a clinical sample.

Abstract

The Revised version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-R) is a 66-item self-report questionnaire that intends to measure the entire spectrum of DSM-defined anxiety disorder symptoms in children. The current study was a first attempt to examine the reliability and validity of the SCARED-R in a clinical setting. Forty-eight children (25 children with anxiety disorders and 23 children with disruptive disorders) aged between 8 and 17 years completed the SCARED-R and the Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children at their first visit to an outpatient treatment centre. Results showed that in this sample of clinically referred children, the SCARED-R was reliable in terms of internal consistency, correlated significantly with an alternative measure of childhood anxiety (the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised), and discriminated well between children with anxiety disorders and children with disruptive disorders. It can be concluded that the SCARED-R is a valuable addition to the arsenal of self-report instruments that are used for the assessment of childhood anxiety.