Revised Children's Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) (2025)

Overview

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) is a 47-item, youth self-report questionnaire with subscales including: separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and low mood (major depressive disorder). It also yields a Total Anxiety Scale (sum of the 5 anxiety subscales) and a Total Internalizing Scale (sum of all 6 subscales). Additionally, The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Parent Version (RCADS-P) similarly assesses parent report of youth’s symptoms of anxiety and depression across the same six subscales.

The RCADS and the RCADS-P can be used for tracking symptoms as well as providing additional information for assessment.

Terms of use

The RCADS and its derivative works (inclusive of translations) are copyrighted by Bruce F. Chorpita and Susan H. Spence. They are available on the RCADS website (https://rcads.ucla.edu/) at no cost to end users. Please visit the Permissions tab to see whether you are required to submit written permission.

Scale

• RCADS - Self-Reported (8-18 years old)
• RCADS – Parent version

Subscales

• Separation anxiety disorder (Child Self-Reported)
• Separation anxiety disorder (Parent Reported)
• Social phobia (Child Self-Reported)
• Social phobia (Parent Reported)
• Generalised anxiety (Child Self-Reported)
• Generalised anxiety (Parent Reported)
• Panic disorder (Child Self-Reported)
• Panic disorder (Parent Reported)
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (Child Self-Reported)
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (Parent Reported)
• Low mood (major depressive disorder; Child Self-Reported)
• Low mood (major depressive disorder; Parent Reported)

Suitability

The RCADS can be completed by young people aged from 8 to 18 years and the RCADS-P can also be completed by the parent or carer of young people aged across the same age groups. Clinical experience indicates that RCADS is too developmentally advanced for use with young people with learning disabilities, but has been found to be useful for some CYP with mild learning difficulties (Law & Wolpert, 2014).

Administration

The questionnaire takes between five and ten minutes to administer. Both parent and child questionnaires can be given to the appropriate respondent to complete themselves. Alternatively, in order to ensure that each item is understood by the respondent, or to gain additional information about each response, the questionnaires can be administered directly by the clinician who can ask follow-up questions.

Working remotely with RCADS

Adaptations and derivatives are not authorised without written permission from Chorpita and Spence. Regarding any adaptations, the instrument may not be altered to remove the copyright or other text in the margins regarding the source and terms. Microsoft Word Versions or Interactive PDF Versions of RCADS do not exist. If you work remotely with your service user and have access to PDF versions of the questionnaire:

• The free Adobe Acrobat Reader does have commenting tools that allow you to add, circle or highlight text and then save the PDF with these 'comments'
• If you are a practitioner going through the questionnaire verbally online and can share screen, we feel it works well for the child or young person to be able to see you edit the questionnaire as you go through it
• The questionnaire can also be edited this way at the service user’s end, although do experiment with this yourself to check its suitability for those you work with - not everyone will find this equally user-friendly and practice or advice may help

Find out more here

Scoring

The RCADS and the RCADS-P can be scored using spreadsheets or syntax available from the developer (link: https://rcads.ucla.edu). The young person’s equivalent US School Grade must be entered, which is grade one below the UK school year. A "t-score" is calculated on these spreadsheets/syntax from a raw score (total score of the scale or subscale). The measures can also be scored manually following the instructions on the Scoring Aids for the RCADS and RCADS-P

• Child RCADS scoring aid
• Parent RCADS scoring aid

Interpretation

The ‘clinical thresholds’ for the overall score were established using the anxiety disorders interview schedule for DSM-IV, child and parent versions (ADIS-IV-C/P; Silverman & Albano, 1996) as a comparison (Chorpita et al., 2005). The thresholds for sub-scales are set using normative data.

A t-score of 65 means that the score is roughly in the top 7% of scores of un-referred young people of the same age (described as borderline clinical by the developer) and a score of 70 means that the score is roughly in the top 2% of scores of un-referred young people of the same age (described as the clinical threshold by the developer).

Psychometric properties​

Other versions

Ebesutani et al. (2012) developed a 25-item version of the RCADS to reduce client burden and administration time. All anxiety items primarily reflected a single ‘broad anxiety’ dimension, which informed the subsequent development of a reduced 15-item Anxiety Total scale. Scoring the RCADS-25 and RCADS-25-P uses converted scores on the total scale and both sub-scales divided into scoring. More information in this paper:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26834091

Radez et al. (2021) developed an 11-item version of the RCADS, aimed to be a brief, reliable and valid screening tool for anxiety and depression among young people aged 11-17. 6 items measure general anxiety symptoms, 5 measure depression, and there are 2 optional questions which assess the impact of symptoms on a young person’s life. The measure has been found to have good psychometric properties, in terms of screening, which are comparable with those of the original RCADS. The developers recommend the use of the 2 optional impact questions, as a way to further improve the accuracy of the RCADS-11 total score. More details including the self-report and parent-report versions of RCADS-11, scoring information and cut offs can be found here:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00817-w

There is also an adapted version of the RCDAS to accommodate characteristics of Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The Anxiety Scale for Children (ASC-ASD) has Parent and Child versions, which are available herehttps://research.ncl.ac.uk/neurodisability/leafletsandmeasures/anxietyscaleforchildren-asd/asc-asdchild/

Translation

The RCADS is available in English (US), Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Korean, Norwegian, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish and Urdu. Use of norms and interpretation of T-scores should be done cautiously with non-English versions. Translated versions are available here: https://rcads.ucla.edu/versions

Further translations are allowed to be conducted with the agreement of the authors (conditions available on the RCADS user guide).

Useful resources

Developer website: https://rcads.ucla.edu/

References

Bouvard,M.,Denis,A.,& Roulin,J.(2015).The French version of the revised child anxiety and depression scale (RCADS) in a nonclinical sample. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 74,119–27

Chorpita, B. F., Moffitt, C., & Gray, J. (2005). Psychometric properties of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale in a clinical sample. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 309-322.

Chorpita, B. F., Yim, L. M., Moffitt, C. E., Umemoto L. A., & Francis, S. E. (2000). Assessment of symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety and depression in children: A Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 835-855.

Donnelly, A., Fitzgerald, A., Shevin, M., & Dooley, B. (2019). Investigating the psychometric properties of the revised child anxiety and depression scale (RCADS) in a non-clinical sample of Irish adolescents. Journal of Mental Health, 28(4), 345-356

Ebesitani, C., Korathu-Larson, P., Nakamura, B., Higa-McMillan, C., & Chorpita, B. (2017). The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale 25-Parent Version: Scale Development and Validation in a School-Based and Clinical Sample. Assessment, 24(6), 712-728.

Ebesutani, C., Korathu-Larson, P., Nakamura, B., Higa-McMillan, C., and Chorpita, B. (2017). The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale 25-Parent Version: Scale Development and Validation in a School-Based and Clinical Sample. Assessment, 24(6), 712-728

Ebesutani, C., Reise, S. P., Chorpita, B. F., Ale, C., Regan, J., Young, J., Higa-McMillan, C., & Weisz, J. R. (2012). The revised child anxiety and depression scale short version: Scale reduction via exploratory bifactor modeling of the broad anxiety factor. Psychological Assessment, 24, 833–45

Esbjørn,B. H.,Somhovd,M. K.,Turnstedt,C.,Reinholdt-Dunne,M. L.(2012).Assessing the revised child anxiety and depression scale (RCADS) in a national sample of Danish youth aged 8–16 years. PLoS One, 7,e37339

Law, D., & Wolpert, M. (2014). Guide to using outcomes and feedback tools with children, young people and families. UK: Press CAMHS.

Mash, E. J., Hunsley J. (2007). Assessment of child and family disturbance: A development-systems approach. In: Mash EJ, Barkley RA, eds. Assessment of childhood disorders fourth edition. New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 3–52

Piqueras, J. A., Martín-Vivar, M., Sandin, B., San Luis, C., Pineda, D. (2017). The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale: a systematic review and reliability generalization meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 218, 153-169

Rodgers, J., Wigham, S., McConachie, H., Freeston M., Honey, E., Parr, JR. Development of the Anxiety Scale for Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASC-ASD) Autism Research, 2016, 9(11), 1205-1215.

Rodgers, J., Wigham, S., McConachie, H., Freeston, M., Honey, E., Parr, J. R. (2016). Development of the Anxiety Scale for Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASC-ASD). Autism Research, 9(11), 1205-1215.

Silverman, W., & Albano, A. (1996). The Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for Children–IV (Child and parent versions). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.