Validation of the Arabic version of the youth anxiety measure of the DSM-5

BACKGROUND: Child anxiety is a highly prevalent and debilitating condition. Questionnaires can help detecting high levels of anxiety in children. No child anxiety questionnaires entailing the full range of the DSM-5 anxiety disorders are available for the Arab World. Therefore, we aimed to translate the child self-report questionnaire of the Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5, 50 items) into Arabic and to examine its psychometric properties.METHODS: We employed a translation-back-translation procedure. We recruited 678 patients who were 8-/12-year-old (M=10.74, SD=1.04) school-going children in Algeria.RESULTS: The internal consistency of the total scale was excellent, and the internal consistencies of the two subparts of the YAM-5 were good. The factor analyses showed that it seems most valid to provide Arabic children the available alternative version of the YAM-5, that combines symptoms of agoraphobia and panic disorder into one subscale.CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the results of this study indicate the usefulness of the Arabic version of the child anxiety questionnaire YAM-5.