Nederlandse Validatie van de School Anxiety Scale–Teacher Report (SAS-TR)

Abstract

The School Anxiety Scale-Teacher Report (SAS-TR) was designed to assess generalized, social and total anxiety from children at the school environment. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the SAS-TR in the Netherlands in a community sample of 225 children aged 4 to 12 years and an anxious sample of 47 children aged 4 to 6 years. The SAS-TR and Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire-Short Form (BIQ-SF) were completed by 84 teachers of the community sample and 47 teachers of the anxious sample. The teachers of the community sample also filled in the teacher version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) for each child. Explorative factor analysis supported the original two-factor structure. The scale was found to have high internal consistency (α = .90 and α = .89). Convergent validity was supported by strong positive significant correlations between the SAS-TR on the one hand and the BIQ-SF and Emotional Symptoms subscale of the SDQ on the other hand (rs = .44 to .81). Divergent validity was only supported by the low, positive significant correlations between the subscale generalized anxiety of the SAS-TR on the one hand and the ‘hyperactivity/inattention’, ‘conduct problems’ and ‘externalising problems’ subscales of the SDQ on the other hand (rs = .16 tot .22). Clinical utility was evident with the total scale discriminating between the community and anxious groups. There were no significant age and sex differences found. In general the findings suggest that the Dutch version of the SAS-TR has satisfactory reliability, construct and convergent validity and clinical utility, and has the potential to facilitate the application of a multi-informant approach to the assessment of generalized and social anxiety among primary school children in the Netherlands.