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The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): Informant Discrepancy, Measurement Invariance, and Test–Retest Reliability

2018; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s10578-018-0854-0

1573-3327

Brigid Behrens, Caroline Swetlitz, Daniel S. Pine, David Pagliaccio,

Early Childhood Education and Development

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) is a measure widely used to assess childhood anxiety based on parent and child report. However, while the SCARED is a reliable, valid, and sensitive measure to screen for pediatric anxiety disorders, informant discrepancy can pose clinical and research challenges. The present study assesses informant discrepancy, measurement invariance, test–retest reliability, and external validity of the SCARED in 1092 anxious and healthy parent–child dyads. Our findings indicate that discrepancy does not vary systematically by the various clinical, demographic, and familial variables examined. There was support for strict measurement invariance, strong test–retest reliability, and adequate external validity with a clinician-rated measure of anxiety. These findings further support the utility of the SCARED in clinical and research settings, but low parent–child agreement highlights the need for further investigation of factors contributing to SCARED informant discrepancy.