Assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents: Italian validation of the short version of the spence children’s anxiety scale for parents

The assessment of anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents requires a valid and reliable single instrument able to detect various anxiety symptoms early and systematically collect data from other informant such as parents. The present study aimed to test the one-factor structure of the SCAS-P-8 and to examine its psychometric properties and invariance across sex and age in an Italian sample of 769 parents of children and adolescents aged 3-18 years (50.8% females). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the one-factor structure of the SCAS-P-8, which showed good reliability and invariance by sex and age. When examining mean differences by sex and age, results showed that female schoolchildren had higher anxiety scores than males and other age groups. A strong correlation with emotional problems demonstrated convergent validity, while discriminant validity resulted from the weak correlations with externalizing symptoms and relationship problems with peers. Overall, findings support the SCAS-P-8 as a valid brief instrument to assess anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents for clinical and research purposes and demonstrate its invariance across sex and age.Anxiety symptoms are very common among children and adolescents. Clinicians and researchers are increasingly focusing on the need for a valid and reliable tool to detect various anxiety symptoms early, as reported by informants such as parents. In the present study, we aimed to test the structure of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale for parents (SCAS-P-8), which includes only 8 questions regarding the anxiety symptoms of their children and adolescents. The study involved 769 parents and their children and adolescents, aged 3-18 years (half of whom were female). The data analysis confirmed the structure of the SCAS-P-8 demonstrating good reliability and stability across sex and age. We also found that on average, girls showed higher anxiety levels than boys during late childhood compared to other age groups. In addition, our results confirmed that SCAS-P-8 is a valid measure of anxiety, as it is strongly related to an instrument that measures emotional problems, while it is weakly related to measures of externalizing symptoms and peer relationship problems. Overall, our results support the SCAS-P-8 as a valid brief instrument for measuring anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents for both clinical and research purposes.