Abstract
BackgroundAnxiety symptoms are pervasive among elderly populations around the world. The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (the GAI) has been developed and widely used in screening those suffering from severe symptoms. Although debates about its dimensionality have been mostly resolved by Molde et al. (2019) with bifactor modeling, evidence regarding its measurement invariance across sex and somatic diseases is still missing.MethodsThis study attempted to provide complemental evidence to the dimensionality debates of the GAI with Mokken scale analysis and to examine its measurement invariance across sex and somatic diseases by conducting differential item functioning (DIF) analysis among a sample of older Chinese adults. The data was from responses of a large representative sample (N = 1314) in the Chinese National Survey Data Archive, focusing on the mental health of elderly adults.ResultsThe results of Mokken scale analysis confirmed the unidimensionality of the GAI, and DIF analysis indicated measurement invariance of this inventory across individuals with different sex and somatic diseases, with just a few items exhibiting item bias but all of them negligible.ConclusionsAll these findings supported the use of this inventory among Chinese elders to screen anxiety symptoms and to make comparisons across sex and somatic diseases.
Highlights
Anxiety symptoms are pervasive among elderly populations around the world
A total of 1314 valid records were collected regarding the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI)-CV, 59.5% of which were from females
Molde et al [23] addressed the contradictions about the dimensionality of The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (the GAI) using bifactor modeling and supported a primarily unidimensional structure across nations
Summary
The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (the GAI) has been developed and widely used in screening those suffering from severe symptoms. Though anxiety disorders are highly prevalent among older adults, screening instruments for the aged leave much to be. The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory only has 20 brief items and facilitates studies regarding anxiety disorders of the elderly prominently. It features a dichotomous and single direction response format, which can decrease the cognitive load of respondents. It involves minimal somatic symptoms, which helps distinguish mental disorders from somatic diseases [3]. Numerous studies have provided strong evidence for its desirability, with internal consistency ranging from 0.91 to 0.95 [3, 7], test-retest reliability ranging from 0.91–0.99 [3, 8] and
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