Anxiety Inventory Paper

1487 Words6 Pages

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is a self-report inventory that determines if a client has brief episodes of anxiety (states) or more stable personality features with chronic levels of anxiety (traits) (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983). This psychological test is reviewed and critiqued through the use of an overview, psychometric properties, research, strengths and limitations, as well as diversity considerations. The STAI, which measures anxiety, was developed by Charles D. Spielberger. The approximate time of this psychological test is 10 to 20 minutes. There are versions of this measure available for adults (aged 14 to 69) and children (aged 6 to 14). There are 2 subscales used within the STAI. The State Anxiety Scale (S-Anxiety) examines the client’s current state …show more content…

More than 10,000 adults and adolescents were tested during the development of the STAI (Julian, 2011). Content validity was optimized by comparing the STAI with other anxiety measures. There were strong associations with the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and Cattell and Scheier’s Anxiety Scale Questionnaire; the STAI and these measures had overall correlations of .73 and .85 (Julian, 2011). Construct validity of the STAI was limited in discriminating anxiety from depression. In order to make sure that anxiety is the only construct being measured, convergent and divergent validity should be examined. High convergent validity is present if the STAI and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) exhibit a high correlation of anxiety. The BDI-II measures depression (Asamsama, Dickstein, & Chard, 2015). Low divergent validity is present if both tests do not correlate. Studies observed higher correlations between the T-Anxiety scale and depression, instead of measures of anxiety (Julian, 2011). The validity of S-Anxiety was derived from testing in high-stress situations, such as military training programs (Julian,