# Evidence-based assessment/Screen for Adult Anxiety Related Disorders
## Lead section

The Screen for Adult Anxiety Related disorders (SCAARED) is an adult anxiety measure that was adapted from the Screen for child anxiety related disorders (SCARED). This assessment was also created by Boris Birmaher and associates. The SCAARED is a self report questionnaire made up of 44-items. The SCAARED is designed to access for four factors of anxiety. These factors include, somatic/panic/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety and social anxiety. Each question measures the frequency or intensity of a variety of symptoms or behaviors and the questionnaire takes about ten minutes to complete. An example of a question in the SCAARED is "I am a worrier". Similar to the child version, the questions in the Adult version are multiple choice with three answer choices; "Not true or hardly every true", "Somewhat true or sometimes true", or "Very true or often true".
Although there are many structured interviews and self-report assessment that assess for Anxiety disorders in adults, the SCAARED was developed in order to have a scale that is comparable to the child scale. If a child has anxiety and the clinician uses the SCARED for assessment, when they turn 18, rather than switching to a different scale the SCAARED can be used and the scores would be comparable. This scale is also clinically useful in order to compare adult and child symptoms. This assessment is useful in clinical and research settings as well , not only for diagnosis but also for comparing scores and analyzing progression and development of anxiety disorders.

## Psychometrics

Click here for instrument reliability table :
Reliability
Evaluation for norms and reliability for the SCAARED (table from Youngstrom et al., extending Hunsley & Mash, 2008; *indicates new construct or category)
CriterionRating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*)Explanation with references
NormsAdequateAverage sized clinical sample, replication study with age/gender matched sample.
Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha, split half, etc.)GoodAlphas between .86 and .97
Interrater reliabilityNot applicableDesigned originally as a self-report scale
Test-retest reliability (stability)Not publishedThis assessment is relatively new, no studies checking test-retest reliability have been published
RepeatabilityNot publishedNo published studies formally checking repeatability :
Click here for instrument validity table :
Validity
Evaluation of validity and utility for the SCAARED (table from Youngstrom et al., unpublished, extended from Hunsley & Mash, 2008; *indicates new construct or category)
CriterionRating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*)Explanation with references
Content validityGoodItems are according to specific DSM diagnostic criteria, based on Screen for Child Related Anxiety Disorders(SCARED)
Contruct validity (e.g., predictive, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity)AdequateShows Convergent validity with SCARED,no extensive research published on convergence with other anxiety scales
Discriminative validityExcellentable to discriminate between anxiety and other disorders as well as within anxiety disorders such as generalized versus social anxiety. AUCs between .72 and .84 (p<0.0001)
Validity generalizationAdequateSome evidence supports use in more than one demographic group
Treatment sensitivityNANo studies formally testing treatment sensitivity however, SCARED for youth has good treatment sensitivity therefor the same would be expected.
Clinical utilityGoodFree (public domain), strong psychometrics :

## Impact

Although the SCAARED is a relatively new assessment its impact on both clinical settings and research setting will most likely be due to its ability to be used longitudinally and comparatively to the child version (SCARED). In addition to it's practical clinical application, assessing anxiety disorders, the SCAARED can be used if a child has a SCARED score but then age and need a second anxiety assessment as an adult. Using the SCARED and SCAARED together throughout a person's life can give information about the progression of anxiety disorders or symptoms.

## Use in other populations

There is no research to support that the Screen for Adult Anxiety Related Disorders has been tested or used in other populations or translated into other languages. The child version, SCARED has shown good reliability across cultures and languages, so it is expected that the SCAARED would do the same.

## Scoring instructions and syntax

We have syntax in three major languages: R, SPSS, and SAS. All variable names are the same across all three, and all match the CSV shell that we provide as well as the Qualtrics export.

### CSV shell for sharing

Here is a shell data file that you could use in your own research. The variable names in the shell corresponds with the scoring code in the code for all three statistical programs.
Note that our CSV includes several demographic variables, which follow current conventions in most developmental and clinical psychology journals. You may want to modify them, depending on where you are working. Also pay attention to the possibility of "deductive identification" -- if we ask personal information in enough detail, then it may be possible to figure out the identity of a participant based on a combination of variables.
When different research projects and groups use the same variable names and syntax, it makes it easier to share the data and work together on integrative data analyses or "mega" analyses (which are different and better than meta-analysis in that they are combining the raw data, versus working with summary descriptive statistics).