title: Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) was developed for assessing anxiety in older adults. The objectives of this work were: (a) to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the GAI, and (b) to explore the associations between anxiety and other variables related to emotional distress (depression) and emotion regulation (rumination, experiential avoidance, and emotion suppression).
  
  
  METHODS
  Three-hundred-and-two people (75.5% female) aged 60 years and over living in the community participated in this study. Anxiety, depression, rumination, suppression and experiential avoidance were measured.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Three factors explaining 50.11% of the variance were obtained. The obtained internal consistency for the total scale was 0.91, with alphas ranging between 0.71 and 0.89 for the factors. Significant associations between all the GAI factors, the GAI total score, and depression, rumination, and experiential avoidance were found (all p < 0.01). Women reported higher scores than men for both the GAI total score and for all of the subscales. However, no significant gender differences were found between people with scores higher than the cut-off score for the GAI.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results of this study suggest that the Spanish version of the GAI displays good psychometric properties. Further, our data suggest that the scale can be recommended for measuring anxiety in non-clinical older Spanish persons, and may be a useful instrument to be used in research studies aimed at analyzing anxiety and its correlates among older adults.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. maria.marquez@uam.es
authors.forename: María
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Márquez-González
authors.forename: Andrés
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Losada
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Fernández-Fernández
authors.forename: Nancy A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Pachana
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013030:Spain; D014175:Translating