1. Research Review Anxiety Disorder

2. 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.

3. 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.