Assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents: Italian validation of the short version of the spence children’s anxiety scale for parents

Abstract

The assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents requires a valid and reliable single instrument able to detect various anxiety symptoms early and systematically collect data from other informant such as parents. The present study aimed to test the one-factor structure of the SCAS-P-8 and to examine its psychometric properties and invariance across sex and age in an Italian sample of 769 parents of children and adolescents aged 3–18 years (50.8% females). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the one-factor structure of the SCAS-P-8, which showed good reliability and invariance by sex and age. When examining mean differences by sex and age, results showed that female schoolchildren had higher anxiety scores than males and other age groups. A strong correlation with emotional problems demonstrated convergent validity, while discriminant validity resulted from the weak correlations with externalizing symptoms and relationship problems with peers. Overall, findings support the SCAS-P-8 as a valid brief instrument to assess anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents for clinical and research purposes and demonstrate its invariance across sex and age.

Plain language summary

Anxiety symptoms are very common among children and adolescents. Clinicians and researchers are increasingly focusing on the need for a valid and reliable tool to detect various anxiety symptoms early, as reported by informants such as parents. In the present study, we aimed to test the structure of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale for parents (SCAS-P-8), which includes only 8 questions regarding the anxiety symptoms of their children and adolescents. The study involved 769 parents and their children and adolescents, aged 3-18 years (half of whom were female). The data analysis confirmed the structure of the SCAS-P-8 demonstrating good reliability and stability across sex and age. We also found that on average, girls showed higher anxiety levels than boys during late childhood compared to other age groups. In addition, our results confirmed that SCAS-P-8 is a valid measure of anxiety, as it is strongly related to an instrument that measures emotional problems, while it is weakly related to measures of externalizing symptoms and peer relationship problems. Overall, our results support the SCAS-P-8 as a valid brief instrument for measuring anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents for both clinical and research purposes.

Keywords

Anxiety children adolescents assessment brief version SCAS parent-reported

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

American Psychiatric Association . (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). American Psychiatric Association.

American Psychiatric Association . (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Association. (DSM-5).

Angold

Costello

Messer

Pickles

(1995). Development of a short questionnaire for use in epidemiological studies of depression in children and adolescents. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 5(4), 237–249.

Arendt

Hougaard

Thastum

(2014). Psychometric properties of the child and parent versions of Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale in a Danish community and clinical sample. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(8), 947–956. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.09.021

Chen

F. F

(2007). Sensitivity of Goodness of Fit Indexes to Lack of Measurement Invariance. Structural Equation Modelling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 14(3), 464–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705510701301834

Costello

E. J.

Mustillo

Erkanli

Keeler

Angold

(2003). Prevalence and development of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. Archives of General Psychiatry, 60(8), 837–844. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.60.8.837

Creswell

Waite

Hudson

(2020). Practitioner Review: Anxiety disorders in children and young people–assessment and treatment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61(6), 628–643. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13186

De Los Reyes

Bunnell

B. E.

Beidel

D. C.

(2013). Informant discrepancies in adult social anxiety disorder assessments: Links with contextual variations in observed behavior. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122(2), 376–386. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031150

Delvecchio

Cavallina

Di Riso

Mazzeschi

(2018). Early evidence of the Italian validation of the trait anxiety scale of the state-trait anxiety inventory for children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15(2), 214–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2017.1297227

10.

Delvecchio

Mabilia

Di Riso

Miconi

J. B.

(2015). A comparison of anxiety symptoms in community-based Chinese and Italian adolescents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(8), 2418–2431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-014-0045-y

11.

DiBartolo

P. M.

Albano

A. M.

Barlow

D. H.

Heimberg

R. G.

(1998). Cross-informant agreement in the assessment of social phobia in youth. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 26(3), 213–220. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022624318795

12.

Galán-Luque

Serrano-Ortiz

Orgilés

(2023) (In press). Factor structure and psychometric properties of the spence children’s anxiety scale: A 25-year systematic review. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-023-01566-1

13.

Goodman

(2001). Psychometric properties of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 40(11), 1337–1345. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200111000-00015

14.

Hair

J. F.

Ringle

C. M.

Sarstedt

C. M.

(2013). Partial least squares structural equation modeling: Rigorous applications, better results and higher acceptance. Long Range Planning, 46(1-2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2013.01.001

15.

Gullone

King

N. J.

Ollendick

T. H.

(2001). Self-reported anxiety in children and adolescents: A three-year follow-up study. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 162(1), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221320109597878

16.

IBM Corp Released . (2017). IBM SPSS statistics for windows, version 25.0. IBM Corp.

17.

JASP Team . (2024). JASP (version 0.18.3) [computer software].

18.

Jung

Kim

(2023). The validity of transdiagnostic factors in predicting homotypic and heterotypic continuity of psychopathology symptoms over time. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14(ecollection2023), Article 1096572. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1096572

19.

Junghaenel

Thoene

A. K.

Dose

Breuer

Goertz-Dorten

Doepfner

(2024). Conceptualizing anxiety and depression in children and adolescents: A latent factor and network analysis. Current Psychology, 43(2), 1248–1263. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04321-w

20.

Kara

(2022). A review of childhood anxiety. Journal of Clinical Trials and Experimental Investigations, 1(3), 64–70. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7213694

21.

J. B.

Delvecchio

Di Riso

Lis

Salcuni

(2017). Early evidence of the Italian parent-report strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ-P). Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 48(2), 335–345. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-016-0646-3

22.

J. B.

Delvecchio

Di Riso

Nie

Y. G.

Lis

(2016). The parent-version of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS-P) in Chinese and Italian community samples: Validation and cross-cultural comparison. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 47(3), 369–383. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-015-0572-9

23.

Ludwig-Walz

Dannheim

Pfadenhauer

L. M.

Fegert

J. M.

Bujard

(2023). Anxiety among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe: A systematic review protocol. Systematic Reviews, 12(1), 64. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02225-1

24.

Möller

E. L.

Majdandžić

Craske

M. G.

Bögels

S. M.

(2014). Dimensional assessment of anxiety disorders in parents and children for DSM-5. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 23(3), 331–344. https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.1450

25.

Nauta

M. H.

Scholing

Rapee

R. M.

Abbott

Spence

S. H.

Waters

(2004). A parent-report measure of children’s anxiety: Psychometric properties and comparison with child-report in a clinic and normal sample. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42(7), 813–839. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(03)00200-6

26.

Orgilés

Galán-Luque

Hervás

Idrobo

Morales

(2023). A brief parent version of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS-P-8): Factor structure, reliability, and invariance in Ecuadorian children. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 55(25), 227–235. https://doi.org/10.14349/rlp.2023.v55.25

27.

Orgilés

Morales

Espada

J. P.

Rodríguez-Menchón

(2022). Early detection of anxiety problems in childhood: Spanish validation of the brief spence children’s anxiety scale for parents. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27(3), 836–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591045221089907

28.

Putnick

D. L.

Bornstein

M. H.

(2016). Measurement invariance conventions and reporting: The state of the art and future directions for psychological research. Developmental Review, 41(1), 71–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2016.06.004

29.

R Core Team. (2019). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. In R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/. R Foundation.

30.

Rapee

R. M.

Creswell

Kendall

P. C.

Pine

D. S.

Waters

A. M.

(2023). Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: A summary and overview of the literature. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 168(1), Article 104376. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2023.104376

31.

Reardon

Creswell

Lester

K. J.

Arendt

Blatter-Meunier

Bögels

S. M.

Coleman

J. R. I.

Cooper

P. J.

Heiervang

E. R.

Herren

Hogendoorn

S. M.

Hudson

J. L.

Keers

Lyneham

H. J.

Marin

C. E.

Nauta

Rapee

R. M.

Roberts

Schneider

Eley

T. C.

(2019). The utility of the SCAS-C/P to detect specific anxiety disorders among clinically anxious children. Psychological Assessment, 31(8), 1006–1018. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000700

32.

Reardon

Spence

S. H.

Hesse

Shakir

Creswell

(2018). Identifying children with anxiety disorders using brief versions of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale for children, parents, and teachers. Psychological Assessment, 30(10), 1342–1355. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000570

33.

Rosseel

(2012). Lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02

34.

Sellbom

Tellegen

(2019). Factor analysis in psychological assessment research: Common pitfalls and recommendations. Psychological Assessment, 31(12), 1428–1441. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000623

35.

Spence

S. H.

(1997). Structure of anxiety symptoms among children: A confirmatory factor-analytic study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(2), 280–297. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.106.2.280

36.

Spence

S. H.

(1998). A measure of anxiety symptoms among children. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(5), 545–566. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(98)00034-5

37.

Speranza

A. M.

Liotti

Spoletini

Fortunato

(2023). Heterotypic and homotypic continuity in psychopathology: A narrative review. Frontiers in Psychology, 14(ecollection2023), Article 1194249. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1194249

38.

Vidair

H. B.

Reyes

J. A.

Shen

Parrilla-Escobar

M. A.

Heleniak

C. M.

Hollin

I. L.

Woodruff

Turner

J. B.

Rynn

M. A.

(2011). Screening parents during child evaluations: Exploring parent and child psychopathology in the same clinic. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 50(5), 441–450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2011.02.002

39.

Weems

C. F.

Taylor

L. K.

Marks

A. B.

Varela

R. E.

(2010). Anxiety sensitivity in childhood and adolescence: Parent reports and factors that influence associations with child reports. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 34(4), 303–315. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-008-9222-x

40.

Whiteside

S. P.

Brown

A. M.

(2008). Exploring the utility of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scales parent-and child-report forms in a North American sample. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22(8), 1440–1446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2008.02.006

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.12 MB