Items and their Coverage
The 21 items on BAI were originally developed from self-report evaluations that were administered at intake at the Beck Clinic (Beck et al., 1988). The intake sample consisted of 810 outpatients of mixed diagnostic categories. From these self-report evaluations and in accordance with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III (DSM-III), 21 items were selected based on two successful factor analyses of different samples (Doward, 2014). The initial item pool of 86 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 (Waller, 2014). Items were chosen to reflect the somatic, affective, and cognitive characteristics of anxiety. This includes items related to physical symptoms, mood symptoms, and thoughts. The author’s intent as to create an assessment that accurately gauged a testtaker’s level of anxiety as well as discriminated between anxiety and depression. For this reason, items that were equally or greater associated with depression were omitted from the assessment. While the item selection was based on covering all three factors of anxiety (somatic, affective, and …show more content…
Some advantages of the BAI include: it is quick and easy to administer and score; the 21 questions are accurate predictors of anxiety disorders (as noted in the validity portion of this paper); it is a useful tool to determine client baselines; it can be helpful for ongoing assessment of the client 's symptomatology; the BAI better discriminates anxiety symptoms from depression when compared to other anxiety measures (as noted in the reliability portion of this paper); and the BAI has been validated in other countries, with studies suggesting that the measure is reliable and valid in a number of
The 21 items on BAI were originally developed from self-report evaluations that were administered at intake at the Beck Clinic (Beck et al., 1988). The intake sample consisted of 810 outpatients of mixed diagnostic categories. From these self-report evaluations and in accordance with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III (DSM-III), 21 items were selected based on two successful factor analyses of different samples (Doward, 2014). The initial item pool of 86 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 (Waller, 2014). Items were chosen to reflect the somatic, affective, and cognitive characteristics of anxiety. This includes items related to physical symptoms, mood symptoms, and thoughts. The author’s intent as to create an assessment that accurately gauged a testtaker’s level of anxiety as well as discriminated between anxiety and depression. For this reason, items that were equally or greater associated with depression were omitted from the assessment. While the item selection was based on covering all three factors of anxiety (somatic, affective, and …show more content…
Some advantages of the BAI include: it is quick and easy to administer and score; the 21 questions are accurate predictors of anxiety disorders (as noted in the validity portion of this paper); it is a useful tool to determine client baselines; it can be helpful for ongoing assessment of the client 's symptomatology; the BAI better discriminates anxiety symptoms from depression when compared to other anxiety measures (as noted in the reliability portion of this paper); and the BAI has been validated in other countries, with studies suggesting that the measure is reliable and valid in a number of