Short form of the Spanish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory

Background/Objective: The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is one of the assessment instruments that are most widely used by psychologists around the world and is the seventh most broadly used by clinical psychologists in Spain. Although several short forms of the STAI have been developed since its creation, none are available for the Spanish general population. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a short form of the STAI. Method: To achieve this, we administered the full STAI to 1,157 healthy adults, and 30 patients with generalized anxiety disorder. We conducted a discriminant analysis using such groups. Results: We obtained a selection of four items for state anxiety and four items for trait anxiety and compared it to other short forms through a confirmatory factor analysis. The short form obtained with the discriminant analysis showed the best fit for Spanish samples. Conclusions: these eight items can be used to facilitate the state and trait anxiety assessment.