Beck Anxiety Inventory

The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) was developed to address the need for an instrument that would reliably discriminate anxiety from depression while displaying convergent validity. Such an instrument would offer advantages for clinical and research purposes over existing self-report measures, which have not been shown to differentiate anxiety from depression adequately. The scale consists of 21 items, each describing a common symptom of anxiety. The respondent is asked to rate how much he or she has been bothered by each symptom over the past week on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (severely). The BAI is recommended for use in assessing anxiety in clinical and research settings.