Temporal stability of the implicit association test-anxiety.
The Implicit Association Test-Anxiety (IAT-Anxiety; Egloff & Schmukle, 2002) provides an indirect assessment of anxiety by measuring associations of self (vs. other) with anxiety-related (vs. calmness-related) words. In 3 studies (using 3 independent samples), we examined the temporal stability of the IAT-Anxiety. In Study 1, 65 participants responded twice to the IAT-Anxiety with a time lag of 1 week. The test-retest correlation was .58. In Study 2 (N = 39), we extended the time interval between test and retest to 1 month and this yielded a stability coefficient of .62. In Study 3 (N = 36), we examined the long-term stability (time lag: 1 year) of the IAT-Anxiety and this showed a correlation of .47. We discuss implications of these results for the assessment of personality dispositions with the IAT.
Egloff
Boris
B
Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. egloff@mail.uni-mainz.de
Schwerdtfeger
Andreas
A
Schmukle
Stefan C
SC
D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment; D014936:Word Association Tests