The psychometric properties of the MASC in a pediatric psychiatric sample

The goals of this study were twofold: to examine the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) in a clinical sample of 193 children and adolescents who had received a diagnosis of major depressive or anxiety disorder, and to discriminate between these two groups of patients. Participants had volunteered in randomized psychopharmacological clinical trials. The MASC four-factor structure was confirmed and its subscales were found to be reliable. The MASC correlated well with other self-report measures of anxiety, and less so with measures of depressive symptoms. The MASC subscales and two MASC items as well as age differentiated between anxious and depressed pediatric patients. If these results are replicated in an independent study, those items could be used by clinicians to discriminate between these two disorders. The MASC is a clinically useful measure to discriminate between anxious and depressed pediatric patients. Limitations due to the highly selective sample are noted.