Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report

Assess anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents through Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale - Child Report. A free PDF can be downloaded here.

By Joshua Napilay on Aug 2, 2025.

Fact Checked by Ericka Pingol.

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What is the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale - Child Report?

The Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) is a psychological assessment tool developed by Dr. Susan Spence to evaluate the severity of anxiety symptoms in children aged 8 to 15 (Magiati et. al., 2017). It was designed in line with the dimensions of anxiety disorders, such as separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and fears of physical injury. The Spence Childrens Anxiety Scale Child Report is widely recognized in the field of child anxiety assessment (Spence, 1998).

Anxiety is a natural and normal brain response to threats or danger. It is usually characterized by fear, worry, or uneasiness about events that may appear uncertain or challenging. It is not necessarily pathological. The right amount of anxiety is a crucial survival stimulus that facilitates productivity. It only becomes pathological when experienced at severe levels, disrupting functioning, well-being, and overall quality of life.

Anxiety in children is different from anxiety in adults (Beesdo et. al., 2009). For instance, children differ in expressing their symptoms because they struggle to verbalize their feelings and emotions. Instead of words, their child's anxiety symptoms are revealed by their behaviors such as crying, tantrums, clinginess, avoidance, or physical complaints. Apart from that, anxiety in children is difficult to identify because their development involves distinct periods of anxious behaviors, including stranger anxiety, nighttime fear, and the like. This makes it more crucial to devise methods to identify potential child anxiety disorders.

This anxiety scale allows an in-depth assessment of anxiety symptoms, making it easier for clinicians or professionals to identify the nature and severity of anxiety in children.

Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report Template

Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report PDF Template

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How to use the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report?

SCAS is a child and parent self-report anxiety scale administered by professionals or clinicians to comprehensively evaluate the nature and levels of anxiety in children. Here is a guide for effectively using the SCAS:

Step 1: Access the tool

Secure a printable copy of Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report from the Carepatron website. Familiarize yourself with the instructions, purpose, scoring, and interpretation of the tool.

Step 2: Establish rapport

Since SCAS is a tool administered to children, establishing rapport is essential. Professionals or clinicians can establish rapport by introducing themselves and creating a comfortable environment. Ensuring the child’s privacy also promotes trust facilitative in the testing process. When children feel comfortable, they are more open and honest with their responses, leading to more accurate insight into their child's anxiety-related emotional experiences.

Step 3: Clearly explain the purpose and instructions

Explaining the purpose and the instructions in child-friendly language helps build a positive experience for children when taking the test. It reduces apprehension, possibly felt by the child, and makes them feel at ease when disclosing their anxiety-related emotional disorders.

Step 4: Administer

The SCAS is administered in a way most suitable to the child. Depending on the child’s needs, it can be administered to be answered by the child with the clinician’s supervision, or it can be read aloud. Give the child enough time to complete the tool. The point scale format ensures a standardized evaluation.

Step 5. Review the responses

Review the responses to ensure the child understood the items correctly. Pay close attention to signs indicative of subclinical or clinical or elevated levels of anxiety.

Step 6. Interpret

Consider the child’s age and gender, and other factors in interpreting the results. Higher subscale scores in certain dimensions may indicate subclinical or elevated severity of anxiety symptoms and suggest the need for further investigation or confirmation of diagnostic status.

Step 7. Discuss the results

Discuss the results with the child’s parents or guardians in a supportive manner. Inform them of the potential concerns and the recommended steps based on the results. It should be noted that administering this tool requires enough training in psychological assessment and knowledge of child development, including experience with diagnostic status using clinical interviews.

When would you use the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report?

Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale - Child Report is a validated anxiety scale with young adolescents, administered to children from different cultures and backgrounds. Here are some key scenarios when you can use SCAS:

Initial screening

For parents or guardians who observe several anxiety symptoms in their children, it is best to employ a screen for child anxiety to provide a clear and accurate evaluation. SCAS offers an in-depth assessment of child anxiety and can be used as a screening tool to identify children or young adolescents experiencing anxiety disorders.

Diagnosis

Clinical, school, and child psychologists, mental health practitioners, counselors, pediatricians, social workers, and other professionals in relevant disciplines may utilize SCAS as part of a comprehensive assessment. Alongside information provided by parent report measures and parent SCAS, it aids in establishing diagnostic status and identifying if a child falls within the clinical and community sample thresholds.

Treatment and monitoring

SCAS helps identify potential areas of child anxiety related emotional disorders. With this, practitioners can design interventions for treatment planning. Its robust psychometric properties make it a reliable tool for measuring change over time in response to treatment.

School settings

Educators can use the SCAS to identify students with elevated levels of anxiety, particularly in cases where children might have social phobia, separation anxiety, or obsessive compulsive tendencies that interfere with learning.

Public health settings

SCAS provides reliable data in detecting specific anxiety disorders (Reardon et. al., 2019). It helps promote better mental health in children and adolescents. Its use in community samples has helped in public policy creation.

What are the benefits of using Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report?

Beyond assessing anxiety in children, Spence Children's Anxiety Scale - Child Report offers more advantages. Here are some of the benefits of this tool:

1. Early identification and treatment

Detecting sub clinical levels or elevated levels of anxiety symptoms at an early stage enables treatment planning and prevents long-term impacts. SCAS has proven positive predictive value for diagnostic status using clinical tools.

2. Comprehensive assessment

SCAS covers anxiety disorders like social phobia, separation anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety, and physical injury fears, allowing for in-depth understanding of severity of anxiety symptoms across domains.

3. Robust psychometric properties

The SCAS is backed by numerous studies published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, Behaviour Research and Therapy, and Abnormal Psychology, supporting its use in clinical and community sample research.

4. Multi-informant approach

The parent SCAS, including parent SCAS t scores, gives a fuller picture (NovoPsych, 2021), enabling comparison between child and parent responses and enriching the understanding of child anxiety.

5. Wide applicability

Validated for various age groups and adaptable across cultures, SCAS has been utilized in diverse contexts with scale with young adolescents, aiding in investigation and confirmation of anxiety concerns globally.

Overall, SCAS is an excellent tool packed with benefits. The things SCAS can offer move beyond the ones listed above. Far greater than all of these, we can start building a healthier life for our children.

References

Beesdo, K., Knappe, S., & Pine, D. S. (2009). Anxiety and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: Developmental issues and implications for DSM-V. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 32(3), 483–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2009.06.002

Magiati, I., Lerh, J., Hollocks, M., Uljarevic, M., Rodgers, J., Wei, K., McConachie, H., Ozsivadjian, A., South, M., Van Hecke, A., Hardan, A., Libove, R., Leekam, S., Simonoff, E., & Emily, S. (2017). The measurement properties of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale–Parent version in a large international pooled sample of young people with autism spectrum disorder. https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1344&context=psych_fac

NovoPsych. (2021, March 15). Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale – Parent (SCAS-Parent). NovoPsych. https://novopsych.com/assessments/child/spence-childrens-anxiety-scale-parent-scas-parent/

Reardon, T., Creswell, C., Lester, K. J., Arendt, K., Blatter-Meunier, J., Bögels, S. M., Coleman, J. R. I., Cooper, P. J., Heiervang, E. R., Herren, C., Hogendoorn, S. M., Hudson, J. L., Keers, R., Lyneham, H. J., Marin, C. E., Nauta, M., Rapee, R. M., Roberts, S., Schneider, S., & Silverman, W. K. (2019). The utility of the SCAS-C/P to detect specific anxiety disorders among clinically anxious children. Psychological Assessment, 31(8), 1006–1018. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000700

Spence, S. H. (1998). A measure of anxiety symptoms among children. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(5), 545–566. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7967(98)00034-5

Commonly asked questions

It usually takes around 10 to 15 minutes to finish the test. The length of completing the tool varies depending on several reasons, such as the child’s reading ability and age. Younger children or those with reading issues may take a little longer to complete the test.

Begin by getting the raw scores of each subscale by summing up the ratings the child gave. Second, convert these to percentile ranks or the established norms for the child’s age and gender. Higher percentile ranks indicate higher anxiety level symptoms. Third, you need to consider clinical cutoffs to determine whether the score lands at a normal range or indicates a need for an intervention. Fourth, analyze subscale scores to determine the most prominent area of anxiety symptoms. Lastly, you may incorporate other relevant information in the child’s life, including their history and behavior.

The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale - Child Report is not a diagnostic tool. It is a test used for screening and assessment of anxiety symptoms. Although it is not a diagnostic tool, it can aid in forming a diagnosis because it offers relevant information about the nature and severity of the anxiety symptoms. The information provided by SCAS is vital in making a diagnosis.