Spence Children's Anxiety Scale Parent Version SCAS-P
Spence Children's Anxiety Scale Parent Version SCAS-P overview
Creator and Context
The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, Parent Version (SCAS-P) is the parent report companion to the SCAS. The scale was developed by Professor Susan Spence, and the parent version psychometrics were established by Nauta, Scholing, Rapee, Abbott, Spence and Waters in 2004.
It contains 38 anxiety items plus one open ended item that is not scored. Unlike the child version, it has no filler items.
Presenting Conditions
The same six subscales as the child version:
Panic attack and agoraphobia (9 items)
Separation anxiety (6 items)
Physical injury fears (5 items)
Social phobia (6 items)
Obsessive compulsive problems (6 items)
Generalised anxiety (6 items)
Administration
Self completed by the parent or carer. Each item is rated Never (0), Sometimes (1), Often (2) or Always (3). There is no set time period the judgement refers to.
Desired Audience
Parents and carers. The original validation covered ages 6 to 18, but the current official T score tables cover only ages 7 to 13, in bands of 7 to 9 and 10 to 13 by gender. This is a real constraint for adolescent services.
The SCAS-P earns its place when the young person is too young, too unwell or too guarded to give a reliable self report, and as a second informant when you want to test whether a low self report reflects genuine wellbeing or masking.
Considerations
Not a diagnostic instrument.
Official T score norms exist only for ages 7 to 13. Parent scores for young people aged 14 and over cannot be T scored with the published tables.
The measure discriminates generalised anxiety poorly compared with the other subscales.
Parent and child agreement is modest.
Commercial organisations and for profit clinical services require a licence from the author, and electronic conversion requires prior approval.
How to score the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale Parent Version SCAS-P
Conducting the assessment
The parent rates 38 anxiety items from Never (0) to Always (3). The single open ended item is not scored.
Interpretation
Items are summed to give a total from 0 to 114, then converted to T scores by the child's gender and age band.
From the author's guidance:
A T score of 60 indicates sub clinical or elevated anxiety and justifies further investigation and confirmation of diagnostic status through clinical interview.
Some clinicians prefer a T score of 65 to indicate clinical status, which is 1.5 standard deviations above the mean and represents around the top 6 percent of the population.
Clinical Considerations
Use an elevated parent score as a prompt for clinical interview, not as a finding.
Where parent and child scores diverge sharply, explore why rather than averaging them.
Be careful with adolescents. Without published T score norms above age 13, use raw scores and clinical judgement.
Spence Children's Anxiety Scale Parent Version SCAS-P use cases
Parent report of childhood anxiety symptoms
Second informant data alongside the child SCAS
Screening in community and school settings
Research into childhood anxiety
Category
Anxiety
Research Summary
Nauta, M. H., Scholing, A., Rapee, R. M., Abbott, M., Spence, S. H., & Waters, A. (2004). A parent report measure of children's anxiety: Psychometric properties and comparison with child report in a clinic and normal sample. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42(7), 813 to 839.
Arendt, K., Hougaard, E., & Thastum, M. (2014). Psychometric properties of the child and parent versions of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale in a Danish community and clinical sample. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(8), 947 to 956.
Spence, S. H. (1998). A measure of anxiety symptoms among children. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(5), 545 to 566.
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