Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) – Parent Version

Abstract

The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) – Parent Version (SCAS-P) is a widely utilized psychometric instrument designed to assess the frequency and severity of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents, as reported by their parents or primary caregivers. This version serves as a crucial screening and outcome measure in both clinical and research settings, offering a reliable parent-proxy perspective on the child’s internalizing behaviors. The scale is structured to align with the diagnostic categories defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), providing scores across six distinct subscales corresponding to specific anxiety disorder types.

The SCAS-P consists of 38 core items plus additional optional items, rated on a 4-point frequency scale. Its multidimensional approach allows clinicians to obtain a detailed profile of anxiety symptoms, differentiating between common fears, generalized worry, and more specific clinical presentations like social phobia or separation anxiety. The development of the parent version, based on the highly successful child self-report scale, ensures comprehensive coverage of the anxiety spectrum in youth.

Keywords

SCAS-P, Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale, Parent Report, Child Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, Panic Attack, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Psychometrics, Child Assessment.

Authors

Susan H. Spence, Hedy Nauta, Annemarie Scholing, Ronald M. Rapee.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the SCAS-P is to provide an efficient and empirically supported measure for the assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents, utilizing the perspective of the parent. This instrument is vital for screening children who may be at risk for an anxiety disorder, monitoring symptom severity over time (such as during treatment interventions), and aiding in clinical diagnosis by providing symptom endorsement frequency across specific diagnostic categories.

The parent version addresses limitations inherent in child self-report measures, particularly for younger children or those with limited insight into their own internal states. By capturing observable behaviors and parental perceptions of distress, the SCAS-P offers a complementary view to the child’s own report, enhancing the overall reliability of the assessment process.

Construct

The SCAS-P is designed to measure the construct of childhood anxiety as a multidimensional set of symptoms, closely modeled after the DSM classification system. It moves beyond a general anxiety score by isolating six distinct factors, allowing for targeted assessment that reflects current clinical understanding of anxiety pathology. The scale focuses on the frequency of anxiety-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The six specific constructs measured by the SCAS-P are:

• Panic Attack / Agoraphobia: Symptoms related to sudden episodes of intense fear, including physical manifestations (e.g., heart racing, dizziness) and avoidance of situations due to fear of panic.
• Separation Anxiety: Distress experienced when separated or anticipating separation from primary attachment figures.
• Physical Injury Fears (Specific Phobia): Fears related to specific objects or situations, such as animals, doctors, heights, or insects.
• Social Phobia (Social Anxiety Disorder): Fear of negative evaluation, performance anxiety, and discomfort in social situations.
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Symptoms related to intrusive, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors (compulsions) performed to reduce anxiety.
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Excessive worry about a variety of events or activities, often accompanied by somatic symptoms like stomach aches or feeling shaky.

Validity

The SCAS-P demonstrates strong evidence of validity across multiple studies. Construct validity is supported by the scale’s alignment with the DSM structure, consistently yielding six factors that mirror recognized anxiety diagnoses. Convergent validity has been established through high correlations with established measures of childhood anxiety, such as the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Internalizing scale and the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS).

Furthermore, discriminant validity is evidenced by the SCAS-P’s ability to differentiate between children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and non-anxious control groups, as well as its ability to distinguish anxiety symptoms from depression symptoms. Studies have shown that the parent report version is sensitive to changes in symptom severity following therapeutic intervention, supporting its utility as an outcome measure.

Reliability

The SCAS-P has demonstrated excellent reliability across diverse samples of children and adolescents. Internal consistency is typically very high, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients often exceeding 0.90 for the total score and generally ranging from 0.70 to 0.90 across the individual subscales, indicating that the items within each subscale measure the same underlying construct reliably.

Test-retest reliability, essential for longitudinal research and treatment monitoring, has also been shown to be strong, confirming that the scores remain stable over reasonable time intervals in the absence of intervention. The inter-rater reliability between two different parents or caregivers rating the same child is typically adequate, though variability can occur based on the caregiver’s proximity to the child’s anxious behavior.

Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the SCAS-P has been extensively investigated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). These analyses consistently support the intended six-factor model, reflecting the six major anxiety categories derived from the DSM framework. This robust factor structure validates the scale’s ability to provide clinically meaningful subscale scores rather than just a global anxiety measure.

The specific item loadings confirm that the scale items effectively group according to the hypothesized dimensions: Panic/Agoraphobia, Separation Anxiety, Physical Injury Fears, Social Phobia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This empirical support for the six-factor structure is a cornerstone of the SCAS-P’s utility in research and clinical practice.

Instrument

Test Type: Screening, Assessment, and Outcome Measurement Scale (Parent Proxy Report)

Format: 38 core items (plus 4 optional items) rated on a 4-point Likert scale.

Language Available: English (original), plus numerous translations including Dutch, Iranian (Persian), Spanish, German, etc.

Population Group: Children and Adolescents

Age Group: Typically 6 to 18 years, though the primary target for the parent version is often children aged 6 to 12.

Population Details: Used with clinical samples (children diagnosed with anxiety disorders) and non-clinical community samples.

Test Methodology: Parents rate the frequency with which their child experiences each symptom over the previous six months using the following scale: 0=Never, 1=Sometimes, 2=Often, 3=Always. Subscale and total scores are calculated by summing the relevant item responses. The scoring key provided is: Panic attack and agoraphobia (Items 12, 19, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34); Separation anxiety (Items 5, 8, 11, 14, 15, 38); Physical injury fears (Items 2, 16, 21, 23, 29); Social phobia (Items 6, 7, 9, 10, 26, 31); Obsessive compulsive (Items 13, 17, 24, 35, 36, 37); Generalized anxiety disorder / overanxious disorder (Items 1, 3, 4, 18, 20, 22).

Keywords

Childhood anxiety, SCAS, Parent proxy, Psychometrics, DSM-IV, Clinical assessment, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Internalizing symptoms.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not specified in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not specified in source content.

Correspondence Address: Not specified in source content. (Original research affiliated with Griffith University, Australia, and various international institutions.)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) is generally available free of charge for non-commercial research and clinical use. Permissions and detailed information regarding the scale can typically be obtained from the official SCAS website. The foundational structure of the scale was published in 1997 (Spence, S.H.), and the parent report measure (SCAS-P) was formally introduced and validated in subsequent publications, notably Nauta et al. in 2004, focusing on the parent report format.

The instrument can be found at: http://www.scaswebsite.com/1_1_.html

Reference’s

• Nauta, H., Scholing, A., Rapee, R., Abbott, M., Spence, S., and Waters, A. (2004). A parent report measure of children’s anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 42 (7), 813-839.
• Spence, S.H. (1997). Structure of Anxiety Symptoms Among Children: A Confirmatory Factor-Analytic Study. J Abnorm Psych 106(2): 280-297.
• Spence, S.H., Rapee, R., McDonald, C., and Ingram, M. (2001). The structure of anxiety symptoms among preschoolers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 1293 – 1316.
• Spence, S.H, Barrett, P.M, Turner, C.M. (2003). Psychometric Properties of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale with Young Adolescents. J Anxiety Disord 17(6): 605-625.
• Mousavi, R., Moradi, A.R., Farzad, V., Mahdavi, E., Spence, S., (2007), Psychometric Properties of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale with an Iranian Sample, International psychology journal, 1(1), 1-16.

Items of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) – Parent Version

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