An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: Psychometric properties.

Abstract

The development ofa 2 l-item self-report inventory for measuring the severity of anxiety in psychiat-ric populations i described. The initial item pool f86 items was drawn from three preexisting scales: the Anxiety Checklist, the Physician's Desk Reference Checklist, and the Situational Anxiety Checklist. A series of analyses was used to reduce the item pool. The resulting Beck Anxiety Inven-tory (BAI) is a 21-item scale that showed high internal consistency (a =.92) and test-retest reliability over 1 week, r(81) =.75. TheBAI discriminated anxious diagnostic groups (panic disorder, general-ized anxiety disorder, etc.) from nonanxious diagnostic groups (major depression, dysthymic disor-der, etc). In addition, the BAI was moderately correlated with the revised Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, r(150) =.51, and was only mildly correlated with the revised Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, r(l 53) =.25. Studies addressing the distinctiveness ofanxiety and depres-sion depend on the availability of reliable and valid assessment instruments. However, a number of studies have reported high correlations (r>.50) between the widely used rating scales of anxiety and depression (e.g., Dobson, 1985; Mendels,