Screen for child anxiety related emotional disorders: are subscale scores reliable? A bifactor model analysis.

The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of creating and scoring subscales for the self-report version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) by examining whether subscale scores provide reliable information after accounting for a general anxiety factor in a bifactor model analysis. A total of 2420 children aged 9-18 answered the SCARED in their schools. Results suggested adequate fit of the bifactor model. The SCARED score variance was hardly influenced by the specific domains after controlling for the common variance in the general factor. The explained common variance (ECV) for the general factor was large (63.96%). After accounting for the general total score (ωh=.83), subscale scores provided very little reliable information (ωh ranged from .005 to .04). Practitioners that use the SCARED should be careful when scoring and interpreting the instrument subscales since there is more common variance to them than specific variance.