Download Research Review Anxiety Disorder

Research Review
Anxiety Disorder
Study 1
 Whiteside and Brown (2008) explore in their research the Spence Children’s
Anxiety Scale (SCAS) in a North American sample and compare it to past studies
which use the SCAS across other countries. Results support the reliability and
validity of the SCAS suggesting that similar to findings in other countries, this
measure is useful in the assessment of childhood anxiety.
 Specifically, results showed that the both child and parent versions were able to
differentiate children and adolescence with anxiety disorders from the controls.
Examination of the internal consistency of the subscales revealed high levels of
reliability ranging from 0.75 to 0.84 for the child version of the SCAS and 0.79 and
0.84 for the parent version. The overall reliability of the scale was 0.94 for the
child version and 0.93 for the parent version.
 The convergent validity of the SCAS was supported by significant correlations
(p<.01 level) between the subscales of the parent measure and the child
measure. As reported in a previous studies the highest parent–child agreement
emerged for anxiety symptoms that are more readily observed through children’s
behaviours (i.e separation anxiety) as compared to those that involve more
internal processes (OCD).
 With high scores on reliability and validity it supports the use of subscales and
total scores for assessment purposes.
Study 2
 The psychometric properties of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale has
also been reported in other studies including that done by Spence, Barrett
and Turner (2003).
 The reliability of the scale was reported at 0.94, thus also providing
evidence for using the rating scale to assess anxiety in younger
populations.
 The convergent validity was examined through inter-correlations with
other measure that assess anxiety such as the Revised Children’s Manifest
Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) and was reported as 0.75 and therefore
determining a significant correlation between measures. Correlations were
then examined between scores for the SCAS and the Children’s Depression
Inventory in order to explore divergent validity. The correlation between
the SCAS total score and the CDI was significantly lower than the
correlation between the SCAS total score and the RCMAS anxiety score.
This finding supports the SCAS as an effective rating tool for anxious, rather
than depressive symptoms.