Correlations among two self-report questionnaires for measuring DSM-defined anxiety disorder symptoms in children: the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders and the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) and the S pence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) are recently developed self-report qu estionnaires for measuring DSM-IV defined anxiety disorder symptoms in chil dren. The present study examined correlations among these measures in a lar ge sample of Dutch school children (N = 1011). Results showed that there wa s a strong correlation between the total anxiety scores of these instrument s (r = 0.89). Furthermore, most of the SCARED subscales were found to be co nvincingly connected to their SCAS counterparts. Finally, a confirmatory fa ctor analysis revealed that SCARED and SCAS anxiety disorder subscales load ed uniquely on separate but intercorrelated factors (i.e., the DSM-IV anxie ty disorder categories). These findings can be taken as evidence for the co ncurrent validity of the SCARED and the SCAS. Although these measures were developed independently, they seem to measure highly similar constructs, vi z anxiety symptoms which can be clustered into the anxiety disorder categor ies as described in the DSM-IV. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights r eserved.