Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders in children and youth. Effective screening methods are needed to identify children in need of treatment. The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) questionnaire is a widely used tool to assess childhood anxiety. We aim toevaluate the psychometric properties of the SCARED questionnaire, test the SCARED factor structure, and evaluate the prevalence of anxiety symptoms in a community sample of Finnish elementary school children, based on both a child and parent report. The sample included all pupils (n = 1,165) in grades 2 through 6 (ages 8–13) in four elementary schools in the city of Turku, Finland. Children completed a Finnish translation of the SCARED questionnaire at school, with one parent report questionnaire per child completed at home. In total, 663 child‐parent dyads (56.9%) completed the questionnaire. Internal consistency was high for both child and parent reports on all subscales (0.71–0.92), except for school avoidance (0.57 child, 0.63 parent report). Inter‐rater reliability ranged from poor to fair across subscales (intraclass correlation 0.27–0.47). Self‐reported anxiety scores were higher than the parent reported scores. Females had significantly higher total scores than males based on the child reports (p = 0.003), but not the parent reports. In the confirmatory factor analysis, hypothesized models did not have a good fit with the data, and modification was needed. The Finnish SCARED questionnaire has good internal consistency. Low child‐parent agreement calls for the importance of including both child and parental reports in the assessment of anxiety symptoms.

中文翻译：

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芬兰小学生中与儿童焦虑相关的情绪障碍（SCARED）的屏幕的心理测量特性。

焦虑症是儿童和青少年中最常见的精神障碍。需要有效的筛查方法来识别需要治疗的儿童。儿童焦虑症相关情绪障碍筛查（SCARED）问卷是评估儿童焦虑症的一种广泛使用的工具。我们的目的是根据儿童和父母的报告，评估SCARED问卷的心理测量特性，测试SCARED因子结构以及评估芬兰小学生社区样本中的焦虑症状的发生率。样本包括芬兰图尔库市四所小学的所有2至6年级（8-13岁）的学生（n = 1,165）。孩子们在学校完成了SCARED问卷的芬兰语翻译，每个孩子在家完成一份家长报告问卷。总共，663例儿童父母双胞胎（56.9％）完成了问卷。在所有子量表中，儿童和家长报告的内部一致性都很高（0.71-0.92），除了学校回避（儿童0.57，父母报告0.63）。评估者之间的信度在各个次级量表中从差到中等（类内相关系数为0.27-0.47）。自我报告的焦虑评分高于父母报告的评分。根据儿童报告，女性的总得分明显高于男性（p  = 0.003），但不是父报表。在验证性因素分析中，假设的模型与数据不太吻合，需要进行修改。芬兰SCARED问卷具有良好的内部一致性。儿童与父母之间的协议不足，要求在评估焦虑症状时同时包括儿童和父母的报告。