Beck Anxiety Inventory

The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), created by Dr. Aaron T. Beck and other colleagues, is a 21-question multiple-choice self-report inventory that is used for measuring the severity of anxiety in children and adults. The questions used in this measure ask about common symptoms of anxiety that the subject has had during the past week (including the day you take it) (such as numbness and tingling, sweating not due to heat, and fear of the worst happening). It is designed for individuals who are of 7 years of age or older and takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. Several studies have found the Beck Anxiety Inventory to be an accurate measure of anxiety symptoms in children and adults.

Question breakdown, scoring and interpretation

Each question inquires about how bothersome a symptom of anxiety has been for the subject over the past month. Scoring the BAI is based on a 0-3 point scale, with each question being scored as follows based on participant response:

• 0 points: NOT AT ALL
• 1 point: MILDLY: It did not bother me much.
• 2 points: MODERATELY: It wasn't pleasant at times.
• 3 points: SEVERELY: It bothered me a lot.

The point values of the chosen answer choices are then summed to produce a total measure score. The BAI has a maximum score of 63.

Interpretation of scores

The following criteria indicates the severity of anxiety based on the total score:

• 0-21: low anxiety: this score suggests a healthy level of anxiety, but could also result from the ability of the subject to mask their anxious symptoms or if the subject is in denial of such symptoms.
• 22-35: moderate anxiety: this score suggests that the individual should work to identify triggers of anxiety symptoms and try to manage anxiety through stress-reduction techniques.
• 36-63: severe anxiety: this score suggests that anxiety symptoms could be potentially harmful to the physical and/or mental well being of the individual. Consulting with a professional may be beneficial if severe anxiety continues.

Note: women with anxiety disorders tend to score 4 points higher than men with anxiety disorders

Two factor approach to anxiety

Though anxiety can be thought of as having several components, including cognitive, somatic, affective, and behavioral components, Beck et al. included only two components in the BAI's original proposal: cognitive and somatic. The cognitive subscale provides a measure of fearful thoughts and impaired cognitive functioning, and the somatic subscale measures the symptoms of physiological arousal.

Since the introduction of the BAI, other factor structures have been implemented, including a four factor structure used by Beck and Steer with anxious outpatients that included neurophysiological, autonomic symptoms, subjective, and panic components of anxiety. In 1993, Beck, Steer, and Beck used a three factor structure including subjective, somatic, and panic subscale scores to differentiate among a sample of clinically anxious outpatients

Because the somatic subscale is emphasized on the BAI, with 15 out of 21 items measuring physiological symptoms, perhaps the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of anxiety are being deemphasized. Therefore, the BAI functions more adequately in anxiety disorders with a high somatic component, such as panic disorder. On the other hand, the BAI won't function as adequately for disorders such as social phobia or obsessive-compulsive disorder, which have a stronger cognitive or behavioral component.

Clinical use

The BAI was specifically designed as "an inventory for measuring clinical anxiety" that minimizes the overlap between depression and anxiety scales. While several studies have shown that anxiety measures, including the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), are either highly correlated or indistinguishable from depression, the BAI is shown to be less contaminated by depressive content

Since the BAI does only questions symptoms occurring over the last week, it is not a measure of trait anxiety or state anxiety. The BAI can be described as a measure of "prolonged state anxiety," which, in a clinical setting, is an important assessment. A version of the BAI, the Beck Anxiety Inventory-Trait (BAIT), was developed in 2008 to assess trait anxiety rather than immediate or prolonged state anxiety, much like the STAI. However, unlike the STAI, the BAIT was developed to minimize the overlap between anxiety and depression.

A 1999 review found that the BAI was the third most used research measure of anxiety, behind the STAI and the Fear Survey Schedule, which provides quantitative information about how clients react to possible sources of maladaptive emotional reactions.

The BAI has been used in a variety of different patient groups, including adolescents. Though support exists for using the BAI with high-school students and psychiatric inpatient samples of ages 14 to 18 years, the recently developed diagnostic tool, Beck Youth Inventories, Second Edition, contains an anxiety inventory of 20 questions specifically designed for children and adolescents ages 7 to 18 years old.

Limitations

Though the BAI was developed to minimize its overlap with the depression scale as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory, a correlation of r=.66 (p<.01) between the BAI and BDI-II was seen among psychiatric outpatients, suggesting that the BAI and the BDI-II equally discriminate between anxiety and depression.

Another study indicates that, in primary care patients with different anxiety disorders including social phobia, panic disorder, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, agoraphobia, or generalized anxiety disorder, the BAI seemed to measure the severity of depression. This suggests that perhaps the BAI cannot adequately differentiate between depression and anxiety in a primary care population.

In a study examining the BAI's use on older adults with generalized anxiety disorder, no discriminant validity was seen between the BAI and measures of depression. This could perhaps be due to the increased difficulty in discriminating between anxiety and depression in older adults due to "de-differentiation" of the symptoms of anxiety with the aging process, as hypothesized by Krasucki et al.

Finally, the mean and median reliability estimates of the BAI tend to be lower when given to a nonpsychiatric population, such as college students, than when given to a psychiatric population.

See also

• Beck Depression Inventory
• Beck Hopelessness Scale
• Major Depression Inventory
• Diagnostic classification and rating scales used in psychiatry
• AACAP practice parameter for anxiety disorders
• Beck Anxiety Inventory
• EffectiveChildTherapy.org guidelines on anxiety problems & disorders