Validation of Child Anxiety Disorders Scales Within the Digitally Based, Comprehensive Mental Health Advisor-Child Assessment

There is a need for accurate and efficient child mental health screening. In particular, there have been calls for systematic screening of childhood anxiety disorders (CADs) given their high prevalence and associated functional impairment. In the current study, we examined the psychometric properties and utility of the anxiety-related subscales of the Mental Health Advisor-Child Assessment (MHA-CA), a comprehensive mental health questionnaire that uses tiered branching logic. Our findings in a sample of 1,645 youth (1,500 community samples, 145 clinical sample) suggest that the MHA-CA anxiety subscales have strong internal consistency and demonstrate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. Selected score cutoffs resulted in an overall sensitivity of nearly 90% and specificity of approximately 80% when both parent- and child-report were considered, with most caregivers and youth accurately screened out after completing 1–3 items. MHA-CA anxiety subscales improve upon existing anxiety questionnaires and offer a promising screener for CADs.