A latent state-trait anxiety model and its application to determine consistency and specificity coefficients

Abstract

In the present study the consistency model (Steyer, 1987) was applied to data gathered with the German version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Laux, Glanzmann, Schaffner, and Spielberger, 1981). The questionnaire was presented twice to 64 university students with an interval of two months between first and second testing. The consistency and specificity coefficients, estimated by LISREL (Jöreskog and Sörbom, 1984), support the state-trait distinction. The state variables have high specificity and consistency coefficients; the trait variables, in contrast, have high consistency coefficients but low or even negligible specificity coefficients. The discussion points out the advantages of the consistency model over the stability model; the most important advantage is that the theoretical structure of the consistency model is more appropriate for the type of application considered. It contains a state factor for each occasion of measurement and a trait factor common to all occasions of measurement. In the stability model, only latent states, but no latent traits occur. Consistency, specificity, and reliability can be identified as proportions of variance determined by latent variables specified in the model. Therefore, data analysis provides statistics concerning the practical significance of the trait and of the effects of situations and/or interactions.

Key Words:

• Anxiety
• state-trait model
• consistency
• latent trait model
• persons-in-situations