Children's Anxiety Scale

Anxiety disorder is a common disorder in adolescence with prevalence rates ranging from 15-31.9%. Studies conducted among adolescents in Western industrialized countries have indicated that anxiety disorder is associated with psychosocial impairment in various life domains, particularly in social and academic domains. Furthermore, anxiety disorders often increase the risk of having a wide range of psychiatric disorders in adulthood such as depression and substance abuse. These findings emphasized the importance of identifying clinically anxious adolescents so that appropriate treatment can be provided. However, accurate identification of clinical anxiety in children and adolescents depends on the availability of reliable and valid screening tools. Although reliable diagnostic interview schedules are available, they are time consuming to administer and require trained interviewers. Self-report questionnaires, by contrast, are less time consuming and less expensive to administer. 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, the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children 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. 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’s 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 analysis 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. Sychometric Properties of the Bulgarian Translation of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale Cecilia Essau

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Last date updated on April, 2024