Psychometric Properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in a Non-Clinical Sample of Children and Adolescents in Saudi Arabia

This paper examined the reliability, convergent validity and factor structure of the self-report Screen for Child Anxiety Disorders (SCARED; Birmaher et al. in J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 36:545-553, 1997) in a large community sample of children and adolescents in Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire showed moderate to high internal consistency and satisfactory test-retest reliability over a 2 week period. In addition, there were significant positive correlations between reported anxiety symptoms with parent report behavioural difficulties. The five factor structure model of the SCARED also had a good model fit in this population. The results showed that self-report anxiety symptoms decreased with age (for boys and not girls) and were higher in adolescent girls. The results suggest that the SCARED could be useful in this population to identify individuals who are at risk of developing anxiety disorders in childhood with a view to implementing prevention and intervention methods to ensure positive developmental outcome over time.