An investigation of the psychometric properties of the Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS) in an Italian sample of community-dwelling older adults

ABSTRACT

Background: The Italian older adult population is increasing and psychiatric problems, such as anxiety among older adults, represent major challenges for public welfare. A strong need exists for instruments specifically developed to assess anxiety among Italian older adults. The Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS) is a 30-item self-report questionnaire that evaluates anxiety among older adults and has demonstrated strong psychometric properties in several languages.

Objective: The present study aimed to validate an Italian version of the GAS (GAS-I) and to preliminarily investigate its psychometric properties.

Method: The translation was performed using a five-stage procedure, following a forward–back process and paying attention to cultural issues. The GAS-I was administered to 231 community-dwelling older adults with other commonly-used questionnaires of anxiety, depression, and quality of life.

Results: Results confirmed good psychometric qualities of the questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses evidenced a unidimensional structure of the GAS-I, in accordance with other validated versions. Convergent and discriminant validity were highly satisfactory. The three-factor model also provided an acceptable fit to the data. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses revealed good discriminatory power of the GAS-I.

Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that the GAS-I is a reliable and valid self-report questionnaire to measure anxiety among Italian older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• aging
• assessment
• Geriatric Anxiety Scale

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Valentina Rossi, Larissa D'Angelo, Judith Evans, John Paul Thompson, Susan Jane Kingshott for their help with the GAS translation, and to Laura Dotti, Marta Mozzoni and Giulia Di Blasi for their help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.