Neil Redfern Helps You Understand The Beck Anxiety Inventory.

By Neil Redfern

The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) was developed to deal with the need for an instrument that would reliably discriminate anxiety from depression while displaying convergent validity. Such an instrument would offer advantages for clinical and research purposes over existing self-report measures, which have not been shown to differentiate anxiety from depression adequately.

The scale contains 21 objects, each of which recount a specific symptom of anxiety. The patient is asked if they are bother by each of the symptoms and to rate the previous week using a 4-point scale ranging from 0 to 3. The final total can range from 0 to 63 once all of the objects are added together.

The Beck Anxiety Inventory test has many benefits, one of which is that it is easy to take and it only takes a few minutes. The studies have shown that men usually score a couple of points lower than women with anxiety. Further testing of clinical and anxiety statistics appear to designate that this test is very good at identifying them.

The Beck Anxiety Inventory test is mostly taken by adults to 17 year olds. It only takes between five and ten minutes and it is very easy to administer.

The scale received high internal reliability and item- total correlations range from .30 to .71 with .60 being the average when the sample of patients (n=83) accomplished the Beck Anxiety Inventory after one week. The connection between the intake and 1 week BAI was .75.

The correlations of the BAI with a set of self-report and clinician-rated scales were all significant. The correlation of the BAI with the HARS-R and HRSD-R were .51 and .25, respectively. The correlation of the BAI with the BDI was .48. Convergent and discriminate validity to discriminate homogeneous and heterogeneous diagnostic groups were ascertained from three studies. The results confirm the presence of these validities. - 29881

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