Social anxiety disorder in 11-12-year-old children: The efficacy of screening and issues in parent-child agreement.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the level of diagnostic and discriminative accuracy of The Social Anxiety Scale for Children - Revised (SASC-R) for identifying social anxiety disorder (SAD) in a community-based sample of 11-12 year-old children. Parent-child diagnostic agreement was also examined.


METHODS
A questionnaire including SASC-R and items on impulsive behavior was sent to a population based sample of children, born in 1992. A total of 2568 parents returned their questionnaires (rr: 70%), and 1297 (51%) consented to further participation. An index group [50 high-scoring children on social anxiety (SA-group)] and two contrast groups [(50 high-scoring children on impulsive behavior (Imp-group) and 50 low-scoring children on SA and Imp, (Ls-group)] were selected for participation.


RESULTS
SAD was assigned 35 (23%) of 150 children; 28 (80%) from the SA-group; 7 (20%) from the Imp- group and 0 from the Ls-group. The SASC-R showed relatively high discriminative accuracy for SAD, but was also influenced by other diagnoses. Mother-child agreement was fair (kappa = 0.46), and mother-only diagnoses were frequent. Both child and parent information are important when diagnosing SAD in this age group.
Kristensen
Hanne
H
Regional Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, RBUP, p.b. 23 Tåsen, 0801 Oslo, Norway. hanne.kristensen@r-bup.no
Torgersen
Svenn
S
D002648:Child; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D015588:Observer Variation; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires