Psychometric Properties of Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explain the validity and reliability of the SCAS translated into Turkish language, as well as testing the validity of the 6-factor model among the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) population. The sampling group consists of 461 students studying in the 4th and 5th grade of 11 primary schools selected randomly among 112 primary schools in Northern Cyprus under the Ministry of National Education. 48.80% of these students were female (N = 225) and 51.20% were male (N = 236). The age of the children ranged from 9 to 12 (X = 9.89, S = 0.69). Exploratory factor analysis was used in order to assess the validity produced by the six-factor model. The confirmatory factor analysis results with six-factor model resulted in a good fit to the data. The Cronbach's Alpha value of the scale was .83 and the split half value was .80. The correlation between the social phobia scores, which is a sub-scale of SCAS, and Social Anxiety Scale for Children was studied and it was observed that the correlation coefficient was found as .523 (p <.001). The MANOVA revealed a significant multivariate main effect of the gender. These results suggested that girls had significantly higher levels of anxiety, social phobia and physical injury fear symptoms compared to boys. The results obtained in the study have demonstrated that SCAS has strong psychometric properties. The study on the Turkish version of the scale has provided psychometric information about the fact that the scale can be used in our country.

Anxiety and harmful oral habits in preschool children during the 2020 first-wave COVID‑19 lockdown in Turkey

“…Hence, the authors compared the SPAS anxiety scores obtained in the present study with the norm values specified for Turkish preschool children. 11 In the present study, although the general anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder data was found to be lower than the norm values, the total SPAS anxiety scores were found to be higher than in the norm study. This difference was due to the higher levels of separation anxiety and physical injury anxiety observed in the present study.…”

“…The one-sample t test analysis was carried out to analyze differences between the anxiety levels obtained in the present study and the mean scores reported in the norm study. 11 The post hoc Šídák pairwise comparison test was performed to determine whether the values obtained for the anxiety subdimensions in the present study were statistically significantly different or not, and to rank the values of the anxiety subdimensions. Categorical data was recorded as number (n) and percentage (%), and quantitative data as mean (M) and standard deviation (SD).…”

“…To that purpose, the authors used SPAS, which has been validated for Turkish children and the reliability of which has been confirmed. 11,15 The questionnaire was administered using the snowball technique through WhatsApp and other social media applications. The questionnaire addressed 5 types of anxiety on a Likert-type scale, but social anxiety questions were not included.…”

Developing an Anxiety Screening Tool for Children in South Africa: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study

“…The SCARED questionnaire was developed "based on anxiety symptoms in clinical populations" for children 8 to 18 years [27], while SCAS measures anxiety symptoms in children aged 8 to 12 years. Additionally, PAS was developed for children aged 3 to 6 years to assist in clinical assessments and determine whether children are showing higher levels of anxiety [28][29][30]. Although these tools check anxiety levels in children, there is no tool to screen for the possible presence of anxiety in young children within the unique cultural context of South Africa.…”

Validity and Reliability of Online Buyer’s Anxiety Scale

“…At the best knowledge of the authors, there have been many researches on the validity and reliability of the instruments to measure anxiety, but they have not especially dealt with digital instruments, the Internet, and the like. For instance, decades ago, the studies were focused on the validity and reliability of State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Metzger, 1976), measurement of the validity in the Foreign Language Anxiety Scale instrument (Aydin et al, 2016), measurement of the validity in the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) (Direktör & Serin, 2017), validity and reliability testing of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) (Basha & Kaya, 2016), and the validity and reliability screening in the depression and anxiety disorders (Marrie et al, 2018). Therefore, it is greatly necessary to have a basically adequate instrument (Bajpai & Bajpai, 2014) since it will give impacts on the generalization or scientific inferences (Hall et al, 2014;Messick, 1994) and it also may be used as the clinical assessment or as the empirical development of science.…”