Brazilian Portuguese version of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS-Brasil)

objective: to describe the cross-cultural adaptation of the spence children's anxiety scale (scas) for use in brazil. methods: cross-cultural adaptation followed a four-step process, based on specialized literature: 1) investigation of conceptual and item equivalence; 2) translation and back-translation; 3) pretest; and 4) investigation of operational equivalence. all these procedures were carried out for both the child and the parent versions of the scas. results: a final brazilian version of the instrument, named scas-brasil, was defined and is presented. conclusion: the scas-brasil instrument seems to be very similar to the original scas in terms of conceptual and item equivalence, semantics, and operational equivalence, suggesting that future cross-cultural studies may benefit from this early version. as a result, a new instrument is now available for the assessment of childhood anxiety symptoms in community, clinical, and research settings.