Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS)
What It Measures
The SCAS asks a child directly how often specific anxious experiences happen to them — worrying that something awful will happen, feeling scared to be alone, having to do things over and over, feeling sick before school.
Forty-four statements are rated never, sometimes, often, or always. Six are positively worded fillers that are not scored; they exist to stop a child from falling into a pattern of endorsing everything negative. The remaining thirty-eight sort into six subscales matching diagnostic categories: separation anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, panic and agoraphobia, generalised anxiety, and fear of physical injury. Totals run 0 to 114, with higher meaning more symptoms.
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: The scale, scoring instructions, and norm tables are freely available from the developer's site at scaswebsite.com, which also hosts translations into 20 languages. Confirm terms before commercial reproduction.
Learn More: Interpretation is by percentile and T-score, not raw total, using tables on the developer's site broken down by age and gender. A T-score of 60 or above — the 85th percentile — indicates elevated and clinically relevant anxiety on the total or any subscale. Anything below 85th percentile is in the normal range.