The revised Anxious Thoughts and Tendencies (AT&T) scale: a general measure of anxiety-prone cognitive style

Background. The AT&T was developed from a perspective which proposes that panic disorder with agoraphobia arises from interaction between a specific biological predisposition, expressed in spontaneous panic attacks, and a general anxiety-prone cognitive style. Many items of the original AT&T, a putative measure of the cognitive component, were complex and ambiguous; and normative data were not available. Method. In this research, the items were simplified and clarified. A community sample of northern New Mexico Hispanics and geographically matched non-Hispanic whites was identified from an earlier epidemiological study. The sample included 151 Anglos and 168 Hispanics; 98 respondents aged 18–34, 75 aged 35–49, 69 aged 50–64, and 77 aged 65 or more; and 111 men and 208 women. Results. Factor analysis produced one major factor with high loadings from the 15 negatively worded items, that accounted for about 41% of the total variation in the 15 items. The mean major factor score for Anglos was 1.65 with a standard deviation of 0.48, and for Hispanics was 1.76±0.52, F=4.17, df=1/311, P