Using Evaluative Criteria to Review Youth Anxiety Measures, Part I: Self-Report

Abstract

Evidence-based assessment serves several critical functions in clinical child psychological science, including being a foundation for evidence-based treatment delivery. In this Evidence Base Update, we provide an evaluative review of the most widely used youth self-report measures assessing anxiety and its disorders. Guided by a set of evaluative criteria (De Los Reyes & Langer, 2018), we rate the measures as Excellent, Good, or Adequate across their psychometric properties (e.g., construct validity). For the eight measures evaluated, most ratings assigned were Good followed by Excellent, and the minority of ratings were Adequate. We view these results overall as positive and encouraging, as they show that these youth anxiety self-report measures can be used with relatively high confidence to accomplish key assessment functions. Recommendations and future directions for further advancements to the evidence base are discussed.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants R01MH119299 and R61MH115113. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Mental Health.