Psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in the general adolescent population

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in a large sample of adolescents from the general population. METHOD: In 2001, 1,340 junior high and high school adolescents in the Netherlands completed the SCARED. The SCARED is a questionnaire that purports to measure five child and adolescent anxiety symptom dimensions. The factor structure of the SCARED was investigated by means of confirmatory factor analyses that were conducted for males and females, early (10-13 years) and middle (14-18 years) adolescent groups, and for Dutch and ethnic minorities. Analyses of variance were carried out to compare mean scores for the various groups. RESULTS: The five-factor structure of the SCARED not only had the best fit for the general adolescent population but also for the age, gender, and ethnic groups. It was also found that the SCARED scores of the adolescent subgroups differed from one another in agreement with previous studies on adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study support the claim that the SCARED has a five-factor structure. The usefulness of the SCARED was also demonstrated.