The Beck Anxiety Inventory–Trait (BAIT): A Measure of Dispositional Anxiety Not Contaminated by Dispositional Depression

Abstract

We describe development of the Beck Anxiety Inventory–Trait (BAIT), a measure of trait anxiety. In Study 1 with 191 undergraduates, the BAIT correlated higher with another trait-anxiety measure than with state anxiety and trait depressiveness and lower with depressiveness than the other trait-anxiety measure did. In Study 2 (Ns of 149 undergraduates initially and 107 at 3 weeks later), the BAIT demonstrated convergent validity against the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck, Epstein, Brown, & Steer, 1988) and self-rated trait anxiety plus discriminant validity against abstract curiosity. In Study 3 (Ns of 161 undergraduates initially and 121 at 3 weeks later), the BAIT correlated more highly with another anxiety measure than with depression, stress, positive affect, and negative affect. It also showed good internal consistency across studies and high stability in Studies 2 and 3, higher than the BAI's in Study 2. Factor analyses across studies all supported 2 factors, 1 Somatic and 1 Subjective.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Dr. Robert Steer on an earlier draft of this article and the statistical advice of Drs. Brian O'Connor and Niels Waller. Dr. Teresa L. DeCicco is now at Trent University.

Notes

∗p < .01.

∗p < .05.

∗∗p < .01.