A multi-measure, multi-ethnic investigation of anxiety

Abstract

The main purpose of the current research was to examine the cross-ethnic variability of various anxiety measurement frameworks, in an understudied East European culture. Three anxiety measures, the Anxiety scale from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI; Millon et al. 2006, 2010), the Trait-Anxiety scale from the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Sharma et al. Personality and Individual Differences, 4, 117-120, 1983) and the Anxiety scale from the NEO Psychological Inventory, Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa and McCrae Journal of Personality Disorders, 6, 343-359, 1992) were administered to various samples, totalizing 2800 participants. Data were collected with the Romanian-language forms of the three scales, from a multi-ethnic sample comprising participants of Romanian, Hungarian, Rroma, and “other” ethnic backgrounds. Results showed that different anxiety measurement frameworks did not exhibit differential functioning across the ethnicity-based samples. Results indicated that that different ethnic groups living in the same culture displayed non-trivial differences in mean level anxiety. The detected cross-cultural differences were consistent across the three measurement instruments, with the Rroma ethnic group scoring significantly lower on anxiety than all the other ethnic groups. The results have implications for the cross-cultural and cross-ethnic adaptation of anxiety measures, as well as for their usage for research and diagnostic purposes.