The Anxiety Attitude and Belief Scale-2: Development, Measurement Model, and Initial Validity.

Abstract

There is a notable lack of measures of enduring beliefs, which are key etiological factors in Beck's cognitive model of anxiety. The Anxiety Attitude and Belief Scale-2 was developed to address this need. Items from the original AABS were reviewed and revised, and additional items were added to cover the range of constructs identified as reflecting anxiety related expectancies while avoiding the confounding of cognition and affect. Suitability of items was examined using cognitive interviewing (Willis, 2004). The resulting set of 48 items was administered to an index sample of individuals reporting anxiety symptoms and a cross-validation sample of undergraduate students in order to derive a measurement model describing its internal structure. The final, 33-item AABS-2 had a bifactor structure of one general and four specific factors, good fit to the data, common factor content across groups, acceptable precision in measurement, and evidence of construct validity. Measures of enduring beliefs related to anxiety disorders are needed to assess etiological factors within cognitive therapy; while there are numerous measures of automatic thoughts, there are few measures of beliefs. The present study sought to address this gap. The items that originally appeared on ten rationally derived scales drawn from clinical phenomenology of anxiety disorders were eventually grouped into four group factors and one general factor in the course of psychometric analyses. The group factors included ones expected to distinguish groups reporting panic, OCD, and social anxiety symptoms from other anxiety symptom groups, and this prediction was supported. The majority of predictions regarding patterns or correlations were also supported. Further validation research is needed to evaluate the validity of the AABS and its subscales in predicting course and outcome of psychotherapy.