Research paperPsychometric properties of the Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5, Part I (YAM-5-I) in a community sample of Spanish-speaking adolescents

- There is a lack of information on brief scales aligned with the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
- YAM-5-I could successfully evaluate youth anxiety symptomatology according to the new diagnostic criteria of DSM-5 (except for specific phobia).
- Findings reveal that YAM-5 can be administered as a screening tool for young people.

BackgroundAnxiety disorders are among the most common mental disorders in adolescence. There is a need for brief screening tools to identify adolescents at risk for anxiety disorders. The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 has been recently developed to assess youths' anxiety symptoms in terms of the current classification system. The goal of this study is to provide a first test of its psychometric properties in a community sample of adolescents in Spain.MethodsThe sample consisted of 505 13- to 17-year-old adolescents who completed Part I of the YAM-5 (YAM-5-I), which measures symptoms of the major anxiety disorders.ResultsData indicated that the YAM-5-I displays appropriate internal consistency reliability. In addition, support was also found for the construct validity of the measure: most items loaded on a factor that represented the hypothesized anxiety syndromes, although it should also be noted that some items exhibited issues and therefore had to be discarded.LimitationsCross-cultural and trans-national studies are needed to determine psychometric properties of scale across languages and cultures.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the YAM-5-I has satisfactory psychometric properties, which indicates that it can be used as a screening tool in Spanish-speaking adolescents from the general population.