Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)

Name: Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)
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Author: Mohammed looti

Mohammed looti

Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)

By Mohammed looti / October 27, 2025

Table of Contents

Abstract

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child) is a widely utilized 47-item self-report questionnaire designed to assess symptoms of anxiety and depression in children and adolescents, typically ranging in age from 8 to 18 years. This instrument is structured around six distinct subscales that align with specific diagnostic categories defined in the DSM-IV.

The RCADS-Child serves as an effective tool for screening and monitoring the severity of internalizing symptoms in clinical and community settings. A parallel instrument, the RCADS-Parent, also exists, allowing for the assessment of the young person’s symptoms from a parental perspective, which can be used concurrently to provide a comprehensive view of the child’s psychological state.

Keywords

RCADS-Child, Anxiety, Depression, Child Assessment, Internalizing Disorders, Separation Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, GAD, DSM-IV.

Authors

Bruce F. Chorpita, L. Yim, C. Moffitt, L. A. Umemoto, S. E. Francis.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the RCADS-Child is to provide a standardized, reliable, and validated measure for screening and monitoring the presence and severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms in youth. It aims to differentiate between specific anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder, facilitating targeted clinical intervention and research.

The scale’s structure, which mirrors DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, makes it highly useful for researchers studying comorbidity among internalizing disorders and for clinicians tracking treatment progress across specific symptom clusters.

Construct

The RCADS-Child measures the broad psychological constructs of anxiety and depression through six distinct, empirically derived subscales, representing internalizing disorders common in childhood and adolescence. These scales collectively form a Total Internalizing Score.

The six constructs measured include: Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD), Social Phobia (SP), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder (PD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). The anxiety subscales (SAD, SP, GAD, PD, OCD) can also be summed to form a Total Anxiety Scale score.

Validity

The original psychometric evaluation conducted by Chorpita and colleagues (2000) demonstrated strong structural validity, confirming that the six-factor model derived from the data aligned precisely with the targeted DSM-IV categories of anxiety and depression. This indicates that the scale accurately measures the intended distinct constructs.

Further validation studies confirmed both convergent and discriminant validity, suggesting that the RCADS-Child scores correlate appropriately with measures of similar constructs (convergent validity) and are distinct from measures of unrelated constructs (discriminant validity). Its utility has been further supported by validation in diverse populations, including a significant Australian community sample (de Ross et al., 2002).

Reliability

The RCADS-Child has consistently demonstrated good reliability across various studies, indicating that the scale produces stable and consistent results. The internal consistency of the six subscales, as well as the composite Total Anxiety and Total Internalizing scores, is generally high, confirming that the items within each subscale reliably measure the same underlying construct.

The development process involved administering the scale to a large community sample (N = 1641 children and adolescents) in the initial study, establishing robust psychometric properties suitable for clinical and research applications.

Factor Analysis

The structural validity of the RCADS-Child was established through factor analysis, which yielded six distinct factors. These six factors corresponded directly to the clinical disorders the scale was designed to measure: Separation Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder.

This factor structure aligns with contemporary nosology of internalizing disorders in youth, supporting the scale’s ability to provide syndrome-specific information rather than just a global distress score. Subsequent validation work in samples like the Australian cohort (de Ross et al., 2002) further confirmed this stable six-factor structure across different age groups (8-12 years and 13-18 years).

Instrument

Test Type: Psychometric self-report measure.

Format: 47 items utilizing a 4-point Likert scale (0=Never to 3=Always).

Language Available: Original English (numerous translations exist).

Population Group: Clinical and community samples of youth.

Age Group: 8 to 18 years.

Population Details: Initially validated on N=1641 community children/adolescents. Further validated on N=405 Australian community children/adolescents.

Test Methodology: Self-administered questionnaire. Scores are summed per subscale, converted into a Total Anxiety Score (5 subscales) and a Total Internalizing Score (6 subscales). Interpretation relies on comparing raw scores to age-normed percentiles.

Interpretation

Scoring involves calculating six individual subscale scores, a Total Anxiety Scale score (sum of the five anxiety subscales), and a Total Internalizing Scale score (sum of all six subscales). Higher raw scores consistently indicate increased symptom severity in the assessed domain.

For clinical interpretation, raw scores are converted into age-specific percentiles, often based on normative data such as the Australian community sample (de Ross et al., 2002). A percentile score of 50 indicates average symptom levels compared to age-matched peers. Scores exceeding higher thresholds (e.g., the 90th percentile) suggest clinically significant or high levels of symptoms, warranting further assessment or intervention.

The specific item summation for each subscale is as follows:

Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD): items 5, 9, 17, 18, 33, 45, 46
Social Phobia (SP): items 4, 7, 8, 12, 20, 30, 32, 38, 43
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): items 1, 13, 22, 27, 35, 37
Panic Disorder (PD): items 3, 14, 24, 26, 28, 34, 36, 39, 41
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): items 10, 16, 23, 31, 42, 44
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD): items 2, 6, 11, 15, 19, 21, 25, 29, 40, 47

Keywords

Self-report, Child psychology, Psychometric properties, Clinical screening, Youth mental health, Internalizing symptoms, RCADS-Parent, Anxiety disorders.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: N/A

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was initially published in 2000. Permissions and fee structures for clinical or large-scale research use should be sought directly from the primary author, Bruce F. Chorpita, or the publishing entity associated with the original journal article.

Reference’s

Chorpita, B. F., Yim, L., Moffitt, C., Umemoto, L. A., & Francis, S. E. (2000). Assessment of symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety and depression in children: A revised child anxiety and depression scale. Behaviour research and therapy, 38(8), 835-855.

de Ross, R. L., Gullone, E., & Chorpita, B. F. (2002). The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale: A Psychometric. Behaviour Change, 19, 2.

Items of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Instructions:

Check the word that shows how often each of these things happens to you. There are no right or wrong answers.

		Never	Sometimes	Often	Always
1	I worry about things	0	1	2	3
2	I feel sad or empty	0	1	2	3
3	When I have a problem, I get a funny feeling in my stomach	0	1	2	3
4	I worry when I think I have done poorly at something	0	1	2	3
5	I would feel afraid of being on my own at home	0	1	2	3
6	Nothing is much fun anymore	0	1	2	3
7	I feel scared when I have to take a test	0	1	2	3
8	I feel worried when I think someone is angry with me	0	1	2	3
9	I worry about being away from my parents	0	1	2	3
10	I get bothered by bad or silly thoughts or pictures in my mind	0	1	2	3
11	I have trouble sleeping	0	1	2	3
12	I worry that I will do badly at my school work	0	1	2	3
13	I worry that something awful will happen to someone in my family	0	1	2	3
14	I suddenly feel as if I can’t breathe when there is no reason for this	0	1	2	3
15	I have problems with my appetite	0	1	2	3
	I have to keep checking that I have done	0	1	2	3
16	things right (like the switch is off, or the door is locked)

		Never	Sometimes	Often	Always
17	I feel scared if I have to sleep on my own	0	1	2	3
	I have trouble going to school in the	0	1	2	3
18	mornings because I feel nervous or afraid

19	I have no energy for things	0	1	2	3
20	I worry I might look foolish	0	1	2	3
21	I am tired a lot	0	1	2	3
22	I worry that bad things will happen to me	0	1	2	3
23	I can’t seem to get bad or silly thoughts out of my head	0	1	2	3
24	When I have a problem, my heart beats really fast	0	1	2	3
25	I cannot think clearly	0	1	2	3
26	I suddenly start to tremble or shake when there is no reason for this	0	1	2	3
27	I worry that something bad will happen to me	0	1	2	3
28	When I have a problem, I feel shaky	0	1	2	3
29	I feel worthless	0	1	2	3
30	I worry about making mistakes	0	1	2	3
	I have to think of special thoughts (like	0	1	2	3
31	numbers or words) to stop bad things from happening

32	I worry what other people think of me	0	1	2	3
	I am afraid of being in crowded places	0	1	2	3
33	(like shopping centers, the movies,
	buses, busy playgrounds)
34	All of a sudden I feel really scared for no reason at all	0	1	2	3
35	I worry about what is going to happen	0	1	2	3
36	I suddenly become dizzy or faint when there is no reason for this	0	1	2	3

		Never	Sometimes	Often	Always
37	I think about death	0	1	2	3
38	I feel afraid if I have to talk in front of my class	0	1	2	3
39	My heart suddenly starts to beat too quickly for no reason	0	1	2	3
40	I feel like I don’t want to move	0	1	2	3
41	I worry that I will suddenly get a scared feeling when there is nothing to be afraid of	0	1	2	3


42	I have to do some things over and over again (like washing my hands, cleaning or putting things in a certain order)	0	1	2	3


43	I feel afraid that I will make a fool of myself in front of people	0	1	2	3
44	I have to do some things in just the right way to stop bad things from happening	0	1	2	3
		0	1	2	3
45	I worry when I go to bed at night	0	1	2	3
46	I would feel scared if I had to stay away from home overnight	0	1	2	3
47	I feel restless	0	1	2	3

Cite this article

APAMLACHICAGOHARVARDIEEEAMA

Mohammed looti (2025). Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child). Psychological Scales & Instruments Database. Retrieved from https://db.arabpsychology.com/scales/revised-child-anxiety-and-depression-scale-child-version-rcads-child/

Mohammed looti. "Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)." Psychological Scales & Instruments Database, 27 Oct. 2025, https://db.arabpsychology.com/scales/revised-child-anxiety-and-depression-scale-child-version-rcads-child/.

Mohammed looti. "Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)." Psychological Scales & Instruments Database, 2025. https://db.arabpsychology.com/scales/revised-child-anxiety-and-depression-scale-child-version-rcads-child/.

Mohammed looti (2025) 'Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)', Psychological Scales & Instruments Database. Available at: https://db.arabpsychology.com/scales/revised-child-anxiety-and-depression-scale-child-version-rcads-child/.

[1] Mohammed looti, "Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child)," Psychological Scales & Instruments Database, vol. X, no. Y, ص Z-Z, October, 2025.

Mohammed looti. Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Child version (RCADS-Child). Psychological Scales & Instruments Database. 2025;vol(issue):pages.