Journal of Anxiety Disorders 28 (2014) 947–956 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anxiety Disorders Psychometric properties of the child and parent versions of Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale in a Danish community and clinical sample Kristian Arendt ∗ , Esben Hougaard, Mikael Thastum Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 9, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 19 February 2014 Received in revised form 26 September 2014 Accepted 29 September 2014 Available online 16 October 2014 Keywords: Anxiety Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale Children Adolescents Parents Assessment a b s t r a c t This study examined the psychometric properties and norms of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and the associated parent version (SCAS-P) in a Danish community and a clinical sample. The total sample consisted of 1240 children (972 from community sample), age 7–17 years, and 805 parents (537 from community sample). Results indicated that SCAS and SCAS-P had good internal consistency on the total scale and all subscales, with exception of the subscale for fear of physical injury. Both scales showed satisfactory 2-week and 3-month retest stability. All subscales and total scales of the SCAS and SCAS-P discriminated between the clinical and community sample. A comparison with the Beck Youth Inventories and the Strength and Difficulty Questionnaire in the clinical sample supported the scales’ convergent and divergent validity. Results of confirmatory factor analyses for SCAS and SCAS-P were in favor of the original model with six correlated factors. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric dis- orders in children and adolescents, and a recent meta-analysis found the mean estimate of prevalence for any anxiety disor- der to be 12.3% in children (age 6–12) and 11.0% in adolescents (age 13–18) (Costello, Egger, Copeland, Erkanli, & Angold, 2011). Although prevalent, anxiety disorders in youth are often over- looked (Chavira, Stein, Bailey, & Stein, 2004) and have been associated with social and academic impairment (Essau, Conradt, & Petermann, 2000; Strauss, Frame, & Forehand, 1987) as well as increased risk of suicidal behavior in adolescents (Boden, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2007). If left untreated a great number of children and adolescents carry their anxiety disorder on into adulthood (Keller et al., 1992), where it has been found to be a precursor of comorbid depression (Roza, Hofstra, van der Ende, & Verhulst, 2003), substance abuse (Costello, Mustillo, Erkanli, Keeler, & Angold, 2003), and other anxiety disorders (Kim-Cohen et al., 2003; Pine, Cohen, Gurley, Brook, & Ma, 1998). Thus, early identifi- cation of childhood anxiety disorders is important. A range of questionnaires have been developed to assess anxi- ety symptoms in children and adolescents (Silverman & Ollendick, ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 87165812. E-mail addresses: Kristian@psy.au.dk (K. Arendt), esbenh@psy.au.dk (E. Hougaard), mikael@psy.au.dk (M. Thastum). 2005). Early developed questionnaires on childhood anxiety, like the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS; [Reynolds & Richmond, 1985]) and Fear Survey Schedule for Children – Revised (FSSC-R; [Ollendick, 1983]), were developed by downward exten- sions of questionnaires designed for adults. Such measures provide information on anxiety symptoms in general, rather than spe- cific symptoms of different anxiety disorders. Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) is a more recently developed questionnaire specifically designed to measure anxiety symptoms for differ- ent DSM-IV anxiety disorders among children and adolescents. The psychometric properties of the child self-report version of SCAS have been examined in a variety of cultures and languages including Australia (Spence, 1998), the United States (Whiteside & Brown, 2008), Germany (Essau, Muris, & Ederer, 2002), Netherlands (Muris, Schmidt, & Merckelbach, 2000), the United Kingdom (Essau, Sasagawa, Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous, Guzmán, & Ollendick, 2011), Belgium (Muris, Merckelbach, Ollendick, King, & Bogie, 2002), Greece (Mellon & Moutavelis, 2007), Sweden (Essau, Sasagawa, et al., 2011), Spain (Orgilés, Méndez, Spence, Huedo- Medina, & Espada, 2012; Tortella-Feliu, Balle, Servera, & de la Banda, 2005), Italy (Di Riso, Chessa, Bobbio, & Lis, 2013), Cyprus (Essau, Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous, Mu˜ noz, 2011), Iran (Essau, Olaya, Pasha, O’Callaghan, & Bray, 2012), Colombia (Amaya & Campbell, 2010), Mexico (Hernández-Guzmán et al., 2010), Japan (Ishikawa, Sato, & Sasagawa, 2009), Mainland China (Zhao, Xing, & Wang, 2012), Hong Kong, China (Li, Lau, & Au, 2011), and South Africa (Muris, Schmidt, Engelbrecht, & Perold, 2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.09.021 0887-6185/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.