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. 1997 Apr;36(4):545-53.
doi: 10.1097/00004583-199704000-00018.

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): scale construction and psychometric characteristics

B Birmaher  1 , S Khetarpal, D Brent, M Cully, L Balach, J Kaufman, S M Neer
Affiliations

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): scale construction and psychometric characteristics

B Birmaher et al. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 1997 Apr.

Abstract

Objective: To develop a reliable and valid child and parent self-report instrument to screen children with anxiety disorders.

Method: An 85-item questionnaire was administered to 341 outpatient children and adolescents and 300 parents. Utilizing item analyses and factor analyses, the original scale was reduced to 38 items. A subsample of children (n = 88) and parents (n = 86) was retested an average of 5 weeks (4 days to 15 weeks after the initial screening.

Results: The child and parent Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) both yielded five factors: somatic/panic, general anxiety, separation anxiety, social phobia For the total score and each of the five factors, both the child and parent SCARED demonstrated good internal consistency (alpha = .74 to .93), test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients = .70 to .90), discriminative validity (both between anxiety and other disorders and within anxiety disorders), and moderate parent-child agreement (r = .20 to .47, p < .001, all correlations).

Conclusions: The SCARED shows promise as a screening instrument for anxiety disorders. Future studies using the SCARED in community samples are indicated.

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