Italian Validation of the Brief Self-Reported Version of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale for Children

Clinical assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents is gaining interest due to the need for brief, valid and reliable instruments that allow early screening through a multiple informant approach. The aim of the present study was to validate the brief self-reported version of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale for children (SCAS-C-8) by examining its concordances and discrepancies with reports from other informant, for example, parents, as relevant and complementary information for screening.

Italian children and early adolescents (N = 1019; 50.5% female) aged 8-12 years, their mothers and fathers were included in the study by completing the SCAS-C-8 and its parent-version (SCAS-P-8). The children and early adolescents also self-reported internalizing, that is, anxiety and emotional problems, and externalizing symptoms on the other scales.

After confirming the one-factor structure of the SCAS-C-8 and its psychometric properties, that is, reliability, convergent validity with internalizing symptoms and discriminant validity with externalizing symptoms, and complete invariance across sex and age, both concordance and discrepancies between SCAS-C-8 and SCAS-P-8, were examined. Results confirmed the low/moderate agreement between reports of anxiety and that mothers overestimate levels compared to fathers. Sex and age differences emerged in patterns of discrepancy between reports as well.

Overall, results confirm that the SCAS-C-8 is a valid, reliable, brief, and cross-domain instrument that, together with the parent-reported version, could help to expand the early detection of anxiety symptoms by adopting a systematic approach with multiple informants capable of integrating relevant and complementary information for prevention and intervention programs.