Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale

SCAS — 44 questions — ~10 min

A questionnaire for anxiety in children and young people, with six subscales. Fill it in together in session, or send it to the family to complete at home.

Before you start

Here are some sentences about how kids sometimes feel. For each one, pick how often it happens to you. There are no right or wrong answers.

For children and teenagers. Answers stay on this device and aren't saved anywhere.

Send to a client

Your client fills it in at home, from a private link with your name and logo. Results are scored and saved to your account, so you can track them over time.

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About the SCAS

The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale is a questionnaire for children and young people, usually aged about 8 to 15. Children rate how often each of 44 experiences happens to them, from “never” to “always”.

Its strength is the detail: as well as a total score, it shows which kinds of anxiety stand out — such as separation anxiety, social fears or panic — which can help guide where to focus.

Questions: 44
Time: 10–15 minutes
Ages: About 8–15
Score range: 0–114

How it’s scored

38 of the questions are scored from 0 to 3 and added up for a total from 0 to 114. The other six are positive “filler” questions that keep the questionnaire balanced — they’re asked but not scored.

The scored questions also make up six subscales: panic and agoraphobia, separation anxiety, physical injury fears, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and generalised anxiety.

There are no fixed severity ranges. Scores are interpreted by comparing them with published norms for the child’s age and gender, available from the official SCAS website.

Good to know

It’s a measure of anxiety symptoms, not a diagnosis.
Younger children, or those who find reading hard, may need the questions read aloud. Make sure they understand each one without being steered towards an answer.
A parent version also exists. Children and parents often see things differently, and both views are useful.
It doesn’t ask about risk. Assess safety separately where there are concerns.

Source