The Beck Anxiety Inventory: A Psychometric Analysis

This study sought to provide information on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) with respect to psychometric properties, gender differences, and relation to depression. A sample of 291 psychiatric patients completed the BAI, and a subsample of 251 completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The results from factor analyses demonstrated that the BAI has 2 factors, corresponding to cognitive and somatic symptoms. Although men and women did not differ in terms of factor structures, they did differ on mean levels of cognitive and somatic symptom scores and on total BAI scores. Finally, the authors found that BAI items were distinguishable from BDI items, suggesting that the symptoms measured in the two scales are not entirely overlapping.