State-Trait Anxiety Scale: what is it and how is it used?

A summary of the characteristics of this psychological test.

Anxiety is part of human existence and we have all felt this emotion at some point. Although it is an adaptive response, its excess can mean psychopathology.

It should be said that, in everyday language, a more or less explicit distinction is made between being anxious and being an anxious person. In the first case it refers to feeling, temporarily, anxious, while in the second it is a characteristic of the person.

This nuance is something that Spielberger's group took into account when they elaborated the Trait-State Anxiety Scalea tool used in clinical psychology that we are going to explain below.

What is the State-Trait Anxiety Scale?

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is a questionnaire originally developed by Charles Spielberger, R. L. Gorsuch and R. E. Lushene. a questionnaire that was originally developed by Charles Spielberger, R.L. Gorsuch and R.E. Lushene in the second half of the last century. in the second half of the last century.

This tool consists of a questionnaire to be answered by the patient, answering 40 Likert-type questions in which he/she will indicate how anxious he/she feels in various situations..

The main purpose of this scale is to find out how much anxiety the patient suffers, but taking into account whether this anxiety is something characteristic of the patient or whether it is something momentary, as a response to a stressful event. High scores on this questionnaire are associated with higher levels of anxiety.

The questionnaire has two scales, each with 20 items. On the one hand, it has the anxiety-trait scale, which allows to know to what extent the person has a personality that predisposes him/her to suffer anxious symptoms (high levels of neuroticism), while on the other hand there is the anxiety-state scale, which evaluates how anxiety occurs in specific situations.

History of this inventory

Charles Spielberger, together with his colleagues R.L. Gorsuch and R.E. Lushene, developed this questionnaire, starting in 1964 and completing its final version in 1983. It was elaborated as a method to evaluate the two types of anxiety, this emotion being understood as a trait of anxiety.This emotion is understood both as a trait and as a state, both in clinical and research settings. In the first phases of the construction of this questionnaire, university samples of about 3,000 people were used.

Initially, this questionnaire was only intended to be administered in adults without diagnosed psychopathology or without belonging to risk groups. However, as it proved to be useful as a diagnostic tool, especially for anxiety disorders, and was very easy to administer by passing the sheet to the patient and having him/her fill it out, its use in clinical psychology became widespread..

At present, the State-Risk Anxiety Scale is among the ten most widely used in both clinical psychology and research, and is often used in psychological assessment courses in psychology faculties due to its easy correction.

State-State Anxiety and Trait Anxiety: How do they differ?

Anxiety, in general terms, is defined as the emotional activation in the face of an element perceived as dangerous, which causes the person to set in motion a series of responses to cope with it, and avoid the possible implications and risks posed by that threat.. However, as we saw before, the concept of anxiety can be defined according to whether it occurs temporarily, i.e., as a state, or whether it is something that belongs to the personality of the individual, i.e., it is a trait.

Anxiety is defined as a state when feelings of fear, nervousness and discomfort, and the associated physiological response, in the form of increased activation of the autonomic nervous system, occur in the face of a stimulus or situation perceived as potentially dangerous. That is, the person feels anxious not because he or she is necessarily predisposed to feel that way, but because the characteristics of the environment contribute to his or her response. State-anxiety is usually an adaptive response and eventually disappears after the threat has been left behind.

Trait-anxiety is a concept that, in terms of symptoms, is not very different from its counterpart state-anxiety, only that the source of this reaction is the anxiety-state.The only difference is that the origin of this emotional reaction is different. There are feelings of worry, stress and discomfort, but they are not due to a dangerous stimulus in the environment, but because the person has a personality predisposition to feel anxious, to a greater or lesser extent and in a more or less adaptive way. The person is usually in tension, it is his day to day.

Composition of the questionnaire

The questionnaire is made up of two scales, one measuring state-anxiety and the other trait-anxiety, each having 20 items and making a total of 40. The items are answered on a Likert scale, from 0 to 3. The final scores can range from 20 to 80, and the higher they are, the more anxiety the individual will manifest.

In both scales there are items that are formulated both in reference to the absence of anxiety and to the presence of anxiety.. For example, an item that is based on the absence of anxiety would be "I feel secure", indicating that the higher the score for this particular item, the less anxiety the individual feels. Other items, such as "I feel worried" are constructed in such a way that the higher the score, the greater the anxiety.

For what disorders is it useful?

The State-Trait Anxiety Scale is used, fundamentally, to detect people who have a predisposition, both genetic and environmental, to suffer from an anxiety disorder. Some of the most characteristic anxiety disorders in which the use of this scale can allow us to have a better understanding of how the patient experiences it are obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social phobia...

However, anxiety is not only something found in people with anxiety disorders. As we have seen, anxiety is an emotional reaction in which there can be symptoms of worry, tension, stress and anxiety. symptoms of worry, tension, stress and discomfort can occur..

For this reason this reaction is also detectable in other psychological conditions, such as eating disorders (ED), especially anorexia and bulimia nervosa. In these disorders, patients are highly preoccupied with their body image, which causes them great discomfort. Someone touching or referring to parts of the body they dislike can trigger a whole series of anxious responses also associated with phobias and other anxiety disorders.

Thus, both in the field of research and in therapies for people with EDs, the use of the State-Trait Anxiety Scale (STAS) is quite common.It allows to know more precisely to what extent the patient feels anxiety with respect to different parts of her body and to focus the therapy towards their acceptance.

For these cases another questionnaire is also used, called PASTAS (Physical Appearance State and Trait Anxiety Scale) which is specialized in trait-anxiety and state-anxiety but in different parts of the body (e.g.; study by Ferrer-Garcia et al., 2017).

How to use it.

The main advantage of the State-Risk Anxiety Scale is that it is self-administered, i.e., the researcher or therapist gives the questionnaire to the patient and it is the latter who is responsible for completing it. It can be administered both individually and in groups, and there is no time limit..

Normally, people without psychopathology and in a good mood take six minutes to complete each of the two scales of the questionnaire separately and ten minutes if it is done together. In people with an altered mood or intellectual difficulties, the questionnaire may take more than twenty minutes to complete.

During the administration, the word "anxiety" should be avoided.. Although the purpose of the questionnaire is to measure this feeling, in order to avoid making the patient more nervous and thus affecting his or her answers, it is advisable to limit oneself to calling it a "self-assessment questionnaire".

Bibliographical references:

• Tilton, S. R. (2008). "Review of the state-trait anxiety inventory (STAI)". News Notes. 48 (2): 1-3.
• Spielberger, C.D.; Gorssuch, R.L.; Lushene, P.R.; Vagg, P.R.; Jacobs, G.A (1983). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Consulting Psychologists Press.
• Ferrer-García, M., Porras-Garcia, B., González-Ibáñez, C., Gracia-Blanes, M., Vilalta-Abella, F., Pla-Sanjuanelo, J.,..., & Gutiérrez-Maldonado, J. (2017). Does owning a "fatter" virtual body increase body anxiety in college students? Annual Review of CyberTherapy and Telemedicine, 15, 147-153.