Anxiety Assessment

Definition of Anxiety

Anxiety has been conceptualized as a stimulus, as a trait, as a motive, and as a drive and has been defined ‘as an emotional state, with the subjectively experienced quality of fear as a closely related emotion’ (Lewis, 1970: 77). Lewis notes that the emotion is unpleasant, future-oriented, disproportional to the threat and includes both subjective and manifest bodily disturbances. There are physiological, cognitive, and behavioural components to anxiety. These give rise to the various methods of the assessment of anxiety. It is important to first distinguish between state anxiety and trait anxiety.

State vs. Trait Anxiety

State anxiety is the momentary experience of anxiety. Trait anxiety is a predisposition or proneness to be anxious. The distinction between state and trait anxiety was first suggested by Cicero (Before the Common Era). Spielberger (1983) suggested that conceptual clarity could be achieved in the anxiety literature by distinguishing between state and trait anxiety. There are various methods to assess state anxiety. The assessment of trait anxiety has been conducted primarily through the use of self-report measures.

Multidimensionality of State and Trait Anxiety

Trait anxiety and state anxiety are both multidimensional constructs (Endler, 1997; Endler, Edwards & Vitelli, 1991). There are at least six facets of trait anxiety: social evaluation, physical danger, ambiguous, self-disclosure, separation and daily routines; and two facets of state anxiety: cognitive-worry and autonomic emotional (Endler & Flett, 2001). These facets of state and trait anxiety are presented in Table 1.

Interaction Model of Anxiety

The distinction between state and trait anxiety has achieved wide recognition in the interaction [Page 36]model of anxiety, a subset of the interaction model of personality (Endler, 1997). According to the interaction model, increases in state anxiety will result only when a situational stressor is congruent with the facet of trait anxiety under investigation. Over 80% of the tests of the multidimensional interaction model of anxiety have yielded support for the model (Endler, 1997).

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