Original Research Articles
Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED)-Child version: validity and reliability assessment among children aged 13-15 years
Authors:
Sinha De Silva ,
University of Colombo, LK
About Sinha
Postgraduate Institute of Medicine
Sudharshi Seneviratne,
Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service, AU
Dulani Samaranayake
University of Colombo, LK
About Dulani
Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
Abstract
Introduction: Anxiety disorders is one of the most prevalent psycho-pathological condition among children and adolescents. Screen for Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED)-Child version is a cross-culturally validated self administered questionnaire to detect children with anxiety disorders.
Objectives: To assess the validity and reliability of SCARED-Child to identify anxiety among adolescents aged 13-15 years attending government schools (Sinhala medium) in the district of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Methods: The SCARED-Child was culturally adapted, translated to Sinhala and its judgmental validity was ensured. The instrument was validated among 423 adolescents aged 13-15 years in Colombo District by assessing criterion validity using the diagnosis made by a consultant psychiatrist as the gold standard, developing clinically validated cut-off values using ROC curve. The internal consistency and test-retest assessment were used to assess the reliability.
Results: The culturally adapted and translated SCARED-Child (Sinhala version) showed sensitivity of 85.7% (95% CI=74.61, 93.25) and specificity of 91.3% (95% CI=88.0, 94.07) at a cut-off of 36.5, with a high reliability of Cronbach's alpha (0.87) and test-retest correlation coefficient (0.74).
Conclusions & Recommendations: This study revealed that SCARED-Child has a high validity and excellent reliability to identify a child with an anxiety disorder at community setting.
How to Cite:
De Silva, S., Seneviratne, S. and Samaranayake, D., 2022. Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED)-Child version: validity and reliability assessment among children aged 13-15 years. Journal of the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka, 28(2), pp.583–591. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/jccpsl.v28i2.8539
Published on
22 Sep 2022.
Peer Reviewed
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