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Brazilian Portuguese version of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS-Brasil)
Diogo A DeSousa1, Circe S Petersen2, Rafaela Behs2
1Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Objective:
To describe the cross-cultural adaptation of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) for use in Brazil.
Methods:
Cross-cultural adaptation followed a four-step process, based on specialized literature: 1) investigation of conceptual and item equivalence; 2) translation and back-translation; 3) pretest; and 4) investigation of operational equivalence. All these procedures were carried out for both the child and the parent versions of the SCAS.
Results:
A final Brazilian version of the instrument, named SCAS-Brasil, was defined and is presented.
Conclusion:
The SCAS-Brasil instrument seems to be very similar to the original SCAS in terms of conceptual and item equivalence, semantics, and operational equivalence, suggesting that future cross-cultural studies may benefit from this early version. As a result, a new instrument is now available for the assessment of childhood anxiety symptoms in community, clinical, and research settings.
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