Analiza validităţii subscalelor anxietate generalizată şi anxietate de separare din scala spence de autoevaluare a anxietăţii la şcolari (scas).
Analysis of the Validity for the Subscales Generalised Anxiety and Separation Anxiety from the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (Scas).

Summary/Abstract: The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS; Spence, 1997) is a child self-report measure designed to evaluate symptoms relating to separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic-agoraphobia, generalized anxiety and fears of physical injury. This scale consists of 44 items, of which 38 reflect specific symptoms of anxiety. SCAS has been adapted and standardized for Romanian children and adolescents between 8 and 15 years old by a team of researchers from Cognitrom LTD, Cluj-Napoca. The aim of this paper was to analyze the validity of two subscales from SCAS: Generalized anxiety (6 items) and Separation anxiety (6 items). I used a non-clinical sample and three clinical samples. All participants were aged between 8 and 15 years. The non-clinical sample consisted of 567 children and adolescents without any anxiety problems. The persons from the clinical samples were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder: generalized anxiety (N=34), separation anxiety (N=25) or posttraumatic stress disorder (N=31). The relationships between the SCAS, Youth Self-Report (YSR) and Parent report on the CBCL were assessed using a subsample of 109 children and adolescents and, respectively, a subsample of 64 children and adolescents and their parents. The validity of the subscales Generalized anxiety and Separation anxiety was investigated by six methods (analysis of Pearson correlation coefficients between each item and all subscales from SCAS; examination of age and gender effects for the subscales by means of ANOVA; comparisons between clinical samples and between non-clinical sample and clinical samples; grouping the subscales Generalized anxiety and Separation anxiety with the scales of YSR and Parent report on the CBCL, by means of cluster analysis; analysis of positive predictive value and negative predictive value). The results indicated that the two subscales have a good criterion-related validity. Evidence was found for both convergent and discriminant validity.

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