Factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Beck Anxiety Inventory in adolescent psychiatric inpatients

Abstract

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.

Race and religion: differential prediction of anxiety symptoms by religious coping in African American and European American young adults

“…Consistent with hypotheses, African Americans reported significantly more positive religious coping, fewer anxiety symptoms, and less negative religious coping than their European American counterparts. The means and standard deviations were consistent with previous work in nonclinical samples [see] [52,55,56] and higher than previous work in clinical samples [see References]. [57,58] …”

Repetitive negative thinking as a predictor of depression and anxiety: A longitudinal cohort study

“…Severity of anxiety symptoms was measured using the 21-item Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck et al, 1988), assessing anxiety symptoms on a 4-point scale. The BAI is a frequently used self-report measure of anxiety and its reliability and validity are well established (Osman et al, 2002). Internal consistency of the BAI in the present study was .94.…”

Parental Behaviors During Family Interactions Predict Changes in Depression and Anxiety Symptoms During Adolescence

“…It consists of 21 common anxiety symptoms that were chosen to avoid overlap with depression symptoms (Beck et al 1988). The BAI has been commonly used with adolescent populations and has been found to have adequate reliability and validity (Osman et al 2002). In the current study, Cronbach's alpha for the BAI was 0.902 at T1 and 0.904 T2.…”