The purpose of this study was to examine further the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) in samples of adolescents, ages 14 to 18 years. The BAI is a 21-item self-report measure of anxiety severity. The BAI total score differentiated between the inpatient and high-school adolescents. In the psychiatric inpatient sample, girls obtained higher anxiety-severity scores than boys; no gender differences were obtained for the BAI total score in the high-school sample. Confirmatory factor analyses did not provide adequate fit for the two- factor oblique BAI models to the separate male and female psychiatric inpatient data. Principal axes with varimax and promax rotations initially identified a four-factor solution in the separate male and female inpatient participants. However, second-order analyses of the primary factors provided stronger support for a single-factor structure in each sample. Estimates of reliability for the BAI were adequate in samples of psychiatric inpatient and high-school adolescents. Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity of the BAI was investigated separately in the male and female inpatient samples. Overall, the BAI showed acceptable psychometric properties in these populations.

The Fear of Pain Questionnaire-III (FPQ-III) is a 30-item self-report measure designed recently to assess fears about pain across three pain dimensions: severe, minor, and medical. We conducted three studies to replicate the factor structure of the FPQ-III and examine several psychometric properties of reliability and validity in nonclinical samples. A principal-axis with oblique rotation analysis provided strong empirical support for the three-factor solution of the FPQ-III (Study 1). In Study 2, results of the confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) confirmed the fit of the three-factor oblique model to an independent sample of data. In addition, we evaluated several measurement models to address issues related to convergent and discriminant validity for the FPQ-III. In Study 3, data from adult samples were analyzed for the adequacy of internal consistency and criterion-related validity of the FPQ-III. The FPQ-III total and scales showed high levels of reliability estimates across the three studies. Limitations and future research with the FPQ-III are discussed.

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One cognitive ability that has been demonstrated in many people when asleep is the capacity to keep track of time sufficiently so that they can self-awaken when desired. Possible practical, physiological and evolutionary sources of this skill are outlined. Such findings help to establish the likely presence of significant cognitive ability when asleep.