Beck Anxiety Inventory

A.T. Beck & R.A. Steer

The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) is a recent addition to the Beck series of inventories. It measures the severity of anxiety in adults and adolescents, giving professionals a firm basis upon which to make confident diagnostic decisions.

The BAI evaluates both physiological and cognitive symptoms of anxiety and item overlap with other self report depression inventories is minimised. The BAI consists of 21 items; each item is descriptive of a symptom of anxiety and is rated on a scale of 0 to 3. It can be administered verbally by a trained interviewer or can be self administered.

The BAI has been found to discriminate well between anxious and non anxious diagnostic groups and as a result, is useful as screening measure for anxiety in a variety of clinical populations.

Norms

Standardised on clinical and non-clinical samples

Reliability Information

Average reliability coefficient: .92
Test-retest reliability: .75