Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Teacher Version)

Abstract

The Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Teacher Version) is a standardized, specialized behavioral rating instrument designed to evaluate early childhood anxiety symptoms in educational and early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Adapted from the original parent-report Preschool Anxiety Scale (PAS; Spence et al., 2001), which was grounded in the structural framework of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (Spence, 1997), the Teacher Version comprises 22 items tailored to observable classroom behaviors. The instrument targets preschool and kindergarten children typically aged 3 to 6 years. Informants (preschool educators, early childhood teachers, and child care personnel) evaluate child behaviors across a 5-point frequency Likert scale ranging from 0 (“Not True at All”) to 4 (“Very Often True”). The assessment maps onto five core symptom domains aligned with contemporary developmental psychopathology classifications: Separation Anxiety, Physical Injury Fears, Social Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) symptoms, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

Extensive psychometric investigations have affirmed the scale’s empirical robustness, demonstrating high internal consistency for the total anxiety score (Cronbach’s α typically ranging between .88 and .93) and acceptable-to-strong reliability across individual subscales (α = .68 to .86). Confirmatory factor analyses establish that a hierarchical structural model—comprising five specific first-order symptom factors loading onto a higher-order general anxiety construct—best accounts for teacher observations. The scale exhibits sound convergent validity with concurrent teacher rating scales (such as the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form internalizing subscales) and structured diagnostic interviews, while maintaining strong discriminant validity against disruptive behavioral constructs and attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptomatology. By addressing contextual variability in early anxiety expression, the teacher-report format provides an indispensable perspective within multi-informant assessment batteries, enabling early identification, tiered clinical triage, and targeted preventative interventions in early childhood educational settings.

Keywords

Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale, teacher rating scale, preschool anxiety, early childhood assessment, separation anxiety, social phobia, generalized anxiety, psychometrics, confirmatory factor analysis, multi-informant assessment, behavioral screening, developmental psychopathology

Authors

The primary architectural and psychometric development of the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale program was led by Susan H. Spence and her colleagues at the University of Queensland and Macquarie University, Australia:

• Susan H. Spence, AO, PhD, DipClinPsych: Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention (AISRAP) and School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Dr. Spence is an internationally recognized expert in child and adolescent anxiety, depression, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), having developed widely implemented assessment tools including the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and its developmental downward extensions.
• Ronald M. Rapee, PhD: Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Emotional Health, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Dr. Rapee is a foundational authority on the etiology, development, assessment, and transdiagnostic treatment of anxiety disorders across the lifespan, particularly in childhood and early development.
• Caroline McDonald, PhD: Clinical psychologist and developmental researcher who contributed significantly to early clinical validation trials, normative sampling, and psychometric operationalization of anxiety manifestations in preschool populations.
• Miranda Ingram, BPsych (Hons): Research psychologist who co-authored the foundational psychometric evaluations of early childhood anxiety structures and informant concordance studies.

Additional developmental adaptations and psychometric evaluations of teacher-administered forms have been advanced collaboratively through international consortia across Australia, Europe, North America, and Asia, validating cross-cultural comparability and structural stability across educational systems.

Purpose

The Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Teacher Version) was designed to systematically capture, quantify, and differentiate anxiety symptoms in early childhood using teachers and preschool educators as collateral informants. Although anxiety is one of the most common forms of psychological distress among preschool-aged children (affecting approximately 9% to 10% of children aged 3 to 6 years), early detection poses formidable clinical challenges. Young children lack the sophisticated meta-cognitive awareness, introspection, and expressive vocabulary necessary to reliably verbalize subjective internalizing distress such as catastrophic cognitions, physiological arousal, and anticipatory dread. Consequently, clinical assessment relies heavily on behavioral observation by primary caregivers and educational staff.

Relying solely on parental reports, however, introduces systemic informant bias and ignores contextual variability. While parents frequently observe bedtime distress, separation struggles at home, and family-specific rituals, teachers observe children in distinct, demanding socio-evaluative environments. In preschool and kindergarten classrooms, children are routinely confronted with peer negotiations, novel adult authority figures, performance demands (e.g., circle time, show-and-tell), structured behavioral transitions, and routine caregiver separations. The Teacher Version of the scale was engineered to operationalize these context-dependent manifestations into an empirically sound, time-efficient screening tool that can be completed without disrupting educational duties.

The clinical and research applications of the scale are multifaceted:

• Early Universal and Targeted Screening: Identifying subclinical or clinical anxiety symptoms within early childhood educational pipelines prior to the consolidation of chronic emotional disorders, school avoidance patterns, and secondary academic underachievement.
• Multi-Informant Assessment Batteries: Serving as the complementary externalizing/classroom counterpart to parent ratings, illuminating informant discrepancies that reflect situational specificity versus pervasive cross-contextual impairment.
• Treatment Outcome Monitoring: Providing objective, ecologically valid metrics to evaluate the real-world generalization of clinic-based interventions, such as child-focused cognitive-behavioral programs (e.g., the Cool Little Kids program) or parent-training modules.
• Epidemiological and Longitudinal Research: Supplying developmental psychopathology researchers with an invariant, structurally validated metric to chart the developmental trajectories of early fear, behavioral inhibition, and affective dysregulation into middle childhood.

Psychological Construct

The theoretical framework of the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale assumes that anxiety during the preschool period is multidimensional, echoing the structural taxonomy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) while accounting for early developmental nuances. The 22 items of the Teacher Version assess five empirically substantiated subscales:

1. Separation Anxiety (Items 1, 4, 10, 13, 18, 22)

Separation anxiety reflects developmentally inappropriate, excessive distress regarding real or anticipated separation from primary attachment figures. In preschool settings, this construct manifests through observable separation resistance during morning drop-off, persistent crying, clinging, repeatedly seeking reassurance regarding parental whereabouts, somatic complaints (headaches, stomachaches) occurring predictably at transition points, and catastrophic fears that harm or abandonment will befall the family unit. Items 1, 18, and 22 explicitly target overt classroom behaviors, while items 4, 10, and 13 capture distress-induced somatization and verbalized catastrophic worries.

2. Social Anxiety (Items 6, 9, 12, 15, 19)

Social anxiety in early childhood encompasses marked, persistent fear of social or performance situations involving unfamiliar peers or adults, driven by underlying fears of scrutiny, humiliation, or social failure. Teachers observe this construct during peer-entry challenges (e.g., item 19: fear of approaching a group of playing children), structured public expression (e.g., item 12: performance paralysis during show-and-tell or classroom sharing), reticence with authority (item 6: apprehension when needing to ask a teacher for help), and social withdrawal when encountering unfamiliar visitors (item 9).

3. Generalized Anxiety Disorder / Generalized Worry (Items 2, 5, 11, 21)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) represents pervasive, uncontrollable apprehension and worry across varied everyday activities, unsupported by specific acute stressors. In preschoolers, generalized worry often presents without the adult capacity to articulate abstract future scenarios, manifesting instead as chronic motor tension, restlessness, hyper-reactivity, irritability, difficulty terminating perseverative worrying cycles (item 2), spending disproportionate portions of the day anxious (item 11), and continuous reassurance-seeking regarding routine classroom expectations (item 21).

4. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Symptoms (Items 3, 8, 14, 17, 20)

Although OCD is classified separately in contemporary diagnostic manuals (such as DSM-5), compulsive and ritualistic behaviors frequently co-occur with early childhood anxiety. Normal developmental rituals (e.g., bedtime routines, wanting things “just so”) peak between ages 2 and 4. However, clinical-grade OCD symptoms deviate substantially in rigidity, functional interference, and associated distress. The scale assesses compulsive checking (item 3), repetitive handwashing (item 8), symmetry/ordering rituals designed to prevent catastrophic outcomes (item 14), intrusive ego-dystonic thoughts or mental images (item 17), and magical thinking/covert neutralizing mental rituals (item 20).

5. Physical Injury Fears / Specific Phobias (Items 7, 16)

This domain captures severe, disproportionate fears elicited by encounters with circumscribed physical objects, environments, or creatures. In the Teacher Version, this is assessed via observable avoidance and panic reactions toward elevated playground equipment or high places (item 7) and intense distress or functional freezing in the presence of insects, spiders, or small animals (item 16). Unlike normative early fears, these reactions trigger significant avoidance that impairs normative peer play and outdoor exploration.

Theoretical Framework

The architectural foundation of the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale is grounded in developmental psychopathology, integrating Bowlby’s attachment theory, Kagan’s behavioral inhibition paradigm, and modern cognitive-behavioral etiology models (such as David Barlow’s Triple Vulnerability Theory and Ronald Rapee’s dual-pathway developmental model).

A central premise is that early childhood anxiety disorders represent severe, maladaptive extremes of normative developmental fears. Fear of separation, stranger wariness, and acute fear of novel environments are evolutionarily conserved survival adaptations that emerge systematically across infancy and toddlerhood. Normative developmental progression sees these fears attenuate as children develop cognitive flexibility, object permanence, emotional regulation, and autonomy. However, in children with high temperamental behavioral inhibition and neurobiological vulnerability, normative fears fail to decline. Instead, they intensify into pervasive avoidance, cognitive inflexibility, and chronic autonomic dysregulation.

The scale incorporates the Triple Vulnerability Model (Barlow, 2000), which posits that clinical anxiety stems from the intersection of:

1. General biological vulnerability: Heritable neurobiological sensitivity of the limbic system, characterized by hyper-reactive amygdaloid circuitry and autonomic hyper-arousal.
2. General psychological vulnerability: Early cognitive schemas reflecting a perceived lack of control over negative, unpredictable environmental events, frequently reinforced by overprotective or anxious parenting styles.
3. Specific psychological vulnerability: Early learning experiences (conditioning, vicarious observation, informational transmission) that channel generalized distress into specific domains, such as physical harm, social scrutiny, or contamination.

Moreover, the tool addresses Informant Discrepancy Theory (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005). Rather than viewing low-to-moderate cross-informant correlations (e.g., between parent and teacher ratings) as measurement error, modern developmental theory recognizes that children’s anxiety expression is context-specific. Teachers serve as objective, non-attachment observers with an internal normative reference group—having observed hundreds of typically developing children—enabling them to evaluate social anxiety, peer avoidance, and structured task compliance with unique clinical validity.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Teacher Version) has been established through construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validation frameworks.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity is supported by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across diverse international cohorts. As established in primary validation studies (Spence et al., 2001; Edwards et al., 2010), the items reliably reflect five correlated first-order factors that load onto a single overarching general anxiety factor. Item loadings across latent factors typically exceed .50, demonstrating that the tool successfully captures both broad internalizing distress and specific DSM-congruent sub-dimensions in educational settings.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been evaluated by correlating teacher PAS scores with established clinical assessment batteries and independent diagnostic interviews:

• Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA): Teacher PAS total scores correlate strongly with the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF) Anxious/Depressed scale (r values typically ranging between .65 and .78) and the broader Internalizing Problems composite (r = .60 to .72).
• Parent-Report Concordance: Consistent with developmental literature, cross-informant correlations between the Teacher Version and the Parent Preschool Anxiety Scale are moderate (r = .30 to .48, p < .001). This confirms that while teachers and parents assess shared core pathology, each captures substantial situation-specific variance. Concordance is highest for overtly visible domains (Separation Anxiety: r ≈ .45 to .52) and lower for internal cognitive domains (Generalized Anxiety: r ≈ .28 to .38).
• Diagnostic Interview Concordance: Preschoolers meeting clinical diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders on the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for Children (ADIS-C/P) or the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA) score significantly higher on corresponding teacher subscales compared to non-clinical controls (p < .001, Cohen’s d ranging from 0.85 to 1.35).

Discriminant Validity

The scale effectively differentiates anxiety from non-internalizing developmental difficulties:

• Correlations with C-TRF Externalizing subscales (e.g., Aggressive Behavior, Rule-Breaking Behavior) are weak to non-significant (r = .08 to .22), indicating that teacher ratings are not driven by general classroom disruption or noncompliance.
• The scale demonstrates acceptable divergence from measures of general cognitive delay, motor deficits, and language delays, confirming that elevated scores reflect affective dysregulation rather than secondary task confusion.

Reliability

The Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Teacher Version) demonstrates solid internal consistency, temporal stability, and inter-rater reliability across empirical investigations.

Internal Consistency

Extensive normative and clinical studies demonstrate strong reliability across the composite instrument and its subscales:

• Total Anxiety Score: Cronbach’s alpha consistently reaches between .89 and .93, indicating exceptional composite reliability suitable for both research screening and individual clinical evaluations.
• Separation Anxiety Subscale: α coefficients range from .80 to .87, supported by distinct items capturing separation distress in preschool environments.
• Social Anxiety Subscale: α coefficients range from .82 to .88, reflecting strong item homogeneity around social-evaluative fears.
• Generalized Anxiety Subscale: α coefficients range from .74 to .82.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Subscale: α coefficients range from .72 to .80.
• Physical Injury Fears Subscale: Due to comprising only two items (items 7 and 16), internal consistency is lower (Spearman-Brown split-half or α = .60 to .68), which is standard psychometrically for two-item brief subscales while still retaining clinical utility.

Test-Retest Reliability and Stability

Temporal stability assessments over a 2- to 4-week retest window yield intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) and Pearson correlation values between r = .76 and .85 for the total score, indicating that teacher ratings capture stable behavioral traits rather than transient day-to-day mood fluctuations. Longitudinal re-evaluations across a 6-month school semester demonstrate moderate stability (r = .55 to .65), reflecting real developmental change, maturation, and environmental familiarization alongside underlying trait anxiety.

Inter-Rater Reliability

When evaluated in classrooms with two independent observers (e.g., lead teacher and assistant teacher/classroom aide), inter-rater reliability coefficients range from ICC = .62 to .74 for total anxiety. Concordance is highest for structured classroom behaviors (social presentation, drop-off separation) and lower for idiosyncratic compulsive rituals.

Factor Analysis

The structural validity of the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale has been established through both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Confirmatory Factor Analytic (CFA) Architecture

Structural validation studies evaluate several competing models:

1. A single-factor unidimensional model (positing that all anxiety behaviors reflect a single internalizing dimension).
2. A 5-factor uncorrelated orthogonal model.
3. A 5-factor correlated oblique model.
4. A hierarchical/second-order model, wherein five distinct first-order factors load onto a higher-order latent “Generalized Childhood Anxiety” construct.

Across validation studies (Spence et al., 2001; Edwards et al., 2010), the hierarchical model and the 5-factor correlated model achieve superior fit across standard goodness-of-fit parameters:

• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ .048 (90% CI [.041, .054]), satisfying the threshold for excellent model fit.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): ≥ .94 to .96.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): ≥ .93 to .95.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ .052.

In contrast, the unidimensional single-factor model yields poor fit indices (CFI < .80, RMSEA > .085), proving that preschool anxiety cannot be reduced to an undifferentiated global distress construct. Factor loadings for individual items onto their assigned first-order latent constructs are robust, with standardized coefficients typically ranging between .52 and .84. Second-order loadings of the five factors onto the broad anxiety construct are similarly high (ranging from .62 to .91), with Generalized Anxiety and Social Anxiety displaying the strongest central loadings.

Measurement Invariance

Multi-group CFA has tested measurement invariance across gender and age groups (3-4 years vs. 5-6 years). The scale demonstrates full metric (weak) invariance and scalar (strong) invariance, confirming that the factor structure, item factor loadings, and item intercepts operate equivalently across boys and girls throughout early childhood.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Teacher Version)
• Acronym: PAS-Teacher / SPAS-Teacher
• Respondent Type: Teacher report (early childhood educators, preschool teachers, kindergarten instructors, or childcare providers who have known the child for at least 1-2 months)
• Target Population: Young children aged approximately 3.0 to 6.5 years
• Administration Format: Standardized paper-and-pencil questionnaire or direct digital web administration
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 8 minutes
• Item Count: 22 items
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type frequency scale:
  • 0 = Not True at All
  • 1 = Seldom True
  • 2 = Sometimes True
  • 3 = Quite Often True
  • 4 = Very Often True
• Scoring and Subscale Calculation:
  • Separation Anxiety: Sum of items 1, 4, 10, 13, 18, 22 (Score range: 0–24)
  • Physical Injury Fears: Sum of items 7, 16 (Score range: 0–8)
  • Social Anxiety: Sum of items 6, 9, 12, 15, 19 (Score range: 0–20)
  • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Sum of items 3, 8, 14, 17, 20 (Score range: 0–20)
  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Sum of items 2, 5, 21, 11 (Score range: 0–16)
  • Total Anxiety Score: Sum of all 22 items (Score range: 0–88)
• Interpretation: Higher scores denote greater severity of anxiety behaviors. Raw scores can be converted into gender- and age-referenced percentile ranks and standardized T-scores (Mean = 50, SD = 10). T-scores ≥ 60 denote borderline/elevated risk, while T-scores ≥ 65 (1.5 SD above the mean) typically represent clinically significant thresholds that warrant comprehensive multi-disciplinary evaluation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Preschool Anxiety Scale and its associated variants were originally developed and validated beginning in 2001 by Professor Susan H. Spence and co-investigators (Spence et al., 2001). In accordance with Dr. Spence’s commitment to open science and accessible clinical resources, the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale instruments—including the Preschool Anxiety Scale (Parent and Teacher Versions)—are made freely accessible for research, clinical diagnosis, and non-commercial educational purposes.

No user fees or royalty licensing charges are required for clinical or academic use. Users may download administrative copies, scoring guidelines, and normative tables directly from the official repository (www.scaswebsite.com). Commercial utilization, inclusion in paid software bundles, or electronic health record (EHR) platforms requires formal written permission and licensing agreements from the copyright holder. In all publications and clinical reports, formal attribution and citation of the primary development papers are mandatory.

References

• Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2000). Manual for the ASEBA preschool forms & profiles. University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth, & Families.
• Barlow, D. H. (2000). Unraveling the mysteries of anxiety and its disorders from the perspective of emotion theory. American Psychologist, 55(11), 1247–1263. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.11.1247
• De Los Reyes, A., & Kazdin, A. E. (2005). Informant discrepancies in the assessment of childhood psychopathology: A critical review, theoretical framework, and recommendations for further study. Psychological Bulletin, 131(4), 483–509. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.4.483
• Edwards, S. L., Rapee, R. M., Kennedy, S., & Spence, S. H. (2010). The assessment of anxiety symptoms in preschool-aged children: The revised Preschool Anxiety Scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 24(5), 500–507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.03.006
• Kagan, J., Reznick, J. S., & Snidman, N. (1987). The physiology and psychology of behavioral inhibition in children. Child Development, 58(6), 1459–1473. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130685
• Rapee, R. M., Schniering, C. A., & Hudson, J. L. (2009). Anxiety disorders during childhood and adolescence: Etiology and treatment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 5, 311–341. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.032408.153628
• Spence, S. H. (1997). Structure of anxiety symptoms in children: A confirmatory factor-analytic study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(2), 280–297. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.106.2.280
• Spence, S. H., Barrett, P. M., & Turner, C. M. (2003). Psychometric properties of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale with young adolescents. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 17(6), 605–625. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0887-6185(02)00236-0
• Spence, S. H., Rapee, R., McDonald, C., & Ingram, M. (2001). The structure of anxiety symptoms among preschoolers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39(11), 1293–1316. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00072-4

Items of the Scale