Parent-child agreement in SCARED and its relationship to anxiety symptoms

The aim of this study is to analyze parent-child agreement in the Spanish version of the Screen for Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders and its relationship with the anxiety symptoms reported in a scheduled interview and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview for Children and Adolescents in order to establish the best informant and the degree of incremental validity when both sources of information are combined. Results indicated that, as in the original English version, parent-children agreement is low, with parents clearly tending to report fewer severe symptoms than children. When both parent and child versions were related to anxiety symptoms of the scheduled interview, children showed higher relationships than parents with all the anxiety categories reported by the scheduled interview. Children's scores were also the best predictors of anxiety symptoms, while incremental validity of parent's reports was quite low. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.