In this study examination is given to the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) in a large community sample of adolescents. Additionally, a comparison was made between the anxiety scores of this Italian adolescent cohort (N = 1975) and a comparative Dutch adolescent cohort (N = 1115).
Findings revealed that a five-factor structure of the SCARED applied not only to the Italian adolescents from the general community, but also to boys and girls, and to early and middle adolescents. Moreover, sex and age differences on anxiety scores within the Italian sample were found to be consistent with previous studies of adolescent anxiety disorders. Finally, Italian adolescents reported higher anxiety scores than their Dutch peers.
Findings of this study highlight that the SCARED is a valid screening instrument to rate anxiety symptoms of Italian adolescents.
Anxiety is one of the most prevalent psychosocial problems among youth in Western societies (Ollendick, King, & Muris, 2002). In epidemiological studies it has been reported that approximately 5–17% of children and adolescents suffer from an anxiety disorder (Bernstein, Borchardt, & Perwien, 1996). It is crucial that anxiety symptoms are recognized since high levels of anxiety symptoms can hinder adolescent development (Crocetti, Klimstra, Keijsers, Hale, & Meeus, in press) and anxiety symptoms many times have a chronic course that persists into adulthood (Roza, Hofstra, van der Hende, & Verhulst, 2003).
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to have adequate tools to screen the severity of anxiety symptoms in the general adolescent population. Even though (semi-)structured interviews may be employed to evaluate DSM-IV-TR (DSM; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) anxiety disorders in adolescents, these interviews are highly time-consuming and require trained interviewers to be administered. However, self-report questionnaires can be easily employed for screening purposes to ascertain whether adolescents fall within a high-risk category. Thus, in a two step procedure, a screening questionnaire can be used to detect adolescents that are at-risk for anxiety, and high-risk adolescents can be further assessed by means of a DSM (semi-)structured interview ( Essau et al., 2002 and Hale et al., 2005).
Several anxiety self-report questionnaires have been developed to evaluate anxiety disorder symptoms. In their review of anxiety rating scales, Myers and Winters (2002) concluded that the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) is o
