Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)

Information about Measure
First Name Brandon
Last Name Kohrt
Email https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brandon_Kohrt
Affiliation The George Washington University
Other means of contacting author (e.g., website, Academia.edu, ResearchGate)
Mental health assessment tool that was adapted/developed/validated Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)
Mental health condition assessed Anxiety Disorders
Idiom of distress included, if any Not Applicable
Lifestage of interest Adult (General)
Age range (age – age)
Country or countries where tool was developed/adapted/validated Nepal
Language(s) of the adapted/developed/validated tool Nepali
Clinical or community sample? Mixed clinical and community sample
Subpopulation in which tool was developed/validated (e.g., tool was developed and tested among middle-class women)? Four main populations were employed for this study: (1) an outpatient clinical population from Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj (TUTH); (2) a community sample with psychiatric illness from the district headquarters in Jumla, (3) a community sample with no psychiatric illness from the district headquarters in Jumla, (4) a community sample from Jumla that did not receive psychiatric diagnoses.
Development procedures Culturally adapted and validated
If validated, what was the gold standard? Diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder by a local psychiatric professional
Description of other development procedures, if applicable
Cronbach’s alpha 0.89
Sensitivity 0.89
Spec 0.91
Other information about tool (e.g., additional psychometrics [NPV, PPV, Youden’s index, diagnostic odds ratio])
Links to development/adaptation/validation studies and/or previous studies using the tool Kohrt BA, Kunz RD, Koirala NR, Sharma VD, Nepal MK: Validation of the Nepali Version of the Beck Anxiety Inventory. Journal of the Institute of Medicine 2003, 25(1):1-4.
Notes when administering the tool  

This tool is intended for both clinical and research applications for the assessment of anxiety among adults in Nepal. The tool should be administered verbally in Nepali by a trained research assistant or clinician.

The psychometric properties listed in this entry reflect a cut-off score of 13/14. Psychometric properties for a range of cut-offs are included in the cited article. “The items “indigestion,” “sweating,” “face flushed,” and “feeling faint” may impair the validity and reliability of the instruments (for more information- see the cited article). Removal of some somatic items may be warranted because overall poor physical health, especially in rural Nepal, may inflate scores of psychological distress.