THE SCREEN FOR CHILD ANXIETY-RELATED EMOTIONAL DISORDERS (SCARED) - SCALE-CONSTRUCTION AND PSYCHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS

Objective: To develop a reliable and valid child and parent self- repo rt instrument to screen children with anxiety disorders. Method: An 85 -item questionnaire was administered to 341 outpatient children and ad olescents and 300 parents. Utilizing item analyses and factor analyses , the original scale was reduced to 38 items. A subsample of children (n = 88) and parents (n = 86) was retested an average of 5 weeks (4 da ys to 15 weeks) after the initial screening. Results: The child and pa rent Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) bot h yielded five factors: somatic/panic, general anxiety, separation anx iety, social phobia, and school phobia. For the total score and each o f the five factors, both the child and parent SCARED demonstrated good internal consistency (alpha = .74 to .93), test-retest reliability (i ntraclass correlation coefficients = .70 to .90), discriminative valid ity (both between anxiety and other disorders and within anxiety disor ders), and moderate parent-child agreement (r = .20 to .47, p < .001, ail correlations). Conclusions: The SCARED shows promise as a screenin g instrument for anxiety disorders. Future studies using the SCARED in community samples are indicated.