PRESCHOOL ANXIETY SCALE: T-SCORES

There are various ways in which cut-off points can be established. The following method uses T-Scores and takes into account the age and gender to the young person. It also considers that high anxiety status may be reflected in both the total score and an elevated subscale score. Parents may report elevated scores on the PAS in two ways: in terms of elevated total scores and high scores on one or more subscale scores. Although the majority of children who show a high total score also show a high score on one or more subscales, this is not always the case. Thus, for clinical assessments, we recommend examining the total and subscale scores. For screening purposes in community samples, it may be sufficient to use the total score for identification of children at risk.

The following T-scores were developed from the community normative sample described in the "norms and interpretation" tab on this site.

• T-Scores enable the comparison of a young person's scores against norms from an equivalent age and gender group from a representative normative sample. A T-score is a standardized score that is calculated from the total distribution of scores within the community sample. Scores are rescaled so that T-scores have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. Scores within one standard deviation (ie. a T-score of 10) above the mean on any dimension are regarded as being within the normal range on that dimension. This process ensures that all subscales and the total score can be interpreted along the same scale, with the same mean and standard deviation, even though they initially had different numbers of items and different non-transformed means
• The cut-off points used for T-scores depend on the purpose of the assessment and different authors suggest different cut-points that should be regarded as indicative of clinical or subclinical levels of psychopathology.
• A T-score of 60 (ie. a T-score of 10 points above the mean T-score of 50 ) is approximately 1 standard deviation above the mean. This represents around the 84th percentile meaning that around 16% of children would be expected to show a score at this level and suggests elevated anxiety. As noted above the PAS should not be used as a diagnostic instrument, in the absence of a clinical interview. We suggest using a T-score of 60 as indicative of sub-clinical or elevated levels of anxiety and justifies further investigation and confirmation of diagnostic status using clinical interview.
• Some clinicians prefer to use a criterion of a T-score of 65, to indicate clinical status (or 1.5 standard deviations above the mean). A T-score of 65 represents around the top 6% of the population. However, given the variation in criteria used by researchers and clinicians to define clinical status, and that the PAS is not intended as a clinical instrument when used in isolation, the score interpretation presented here uses the term “elevated” and is defined as T-scores above 60.
• If preferred, percentile scores may be used instead of T-scores and the T-score tables also present the percentile value for each subscale and total score.

The scoring sheet can be downloaded and used to determine Preschool Anxiety Scale T-scores. The raw scores must first be calculated for each subscale and the total score. Then, the raw scores are circled on the sheet and the corresponding T-Score is identified from the T-score column. The raw score and corresponding T-score can be recorded at the bottom of the page. This process can also be used to identify percentile scores.