Description

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED) is a 41-item self-report screening tool (with parallel caregiver form) for 9-18-year old youth that quantifies symptoms across five DSM-aligned domains – panic/somatic, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, social phobia, and school phobia. Responses are rated on a 3-point scale ranging from 0 (“not true or hardly ever true”) to 2 (“very true or often true”). Item sums yield subscale scores and a total distress score. Higher scores indicate greater likelihood and severity of clinically significant anxiety, guiding decisions to refer for diagnostic evaluation.

AI/AN Communities where the measure has been used

Southwest tribal communities

Demographics of AI/AN participants where the scale has been used

Unspecified

Notes on adaptations or modifications

N/A

Modality and administration

Self-report OR caregiver report on the child; administration method unspecified.

Scoring

Responses are rated on a 3-point scale ranging from 0 (“not true or hardly ever true”) to 2 (“very true or often true”). Items are summed for subscale scores and/or a total score.

Psychometric evidence

“All 41 items had item remainder coefficients in the range of .34 to .67. For both the child and parent versions of the SCARED, Cronbach alpha’s values for the total score were approximately .90”. Birmaher et al.( 1999)

Citation(s)

Birmaher, B., Brent, D. A., Chiapetta, L., Bridge, J., Monga, S., & Baugher, M. (1999). Psychometric Properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): A Replication Study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 38(10), 1230–1236. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-199910000-00011

Note: One REDCap file includes both adult-report on child and youth self-report measures