title: Application of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory-Chinese Version (GAI-CV) to older people in Beijing communities.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) was developed to assess anxiety in older adults. The objectives of this work were as follows: (a) to analyze the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the GAI (GAI-CV), and (b) to explore the extent of anxiety and related factors in the elderly Chinese residents of Beijing.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants in this study included 1,047 people (59.4% female) more than 60 years old who were living in the community. They were randomly selected from 15 communities in Beijing. Basic information was collected. Anxiety was measured using the GAI-CV, the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The GAI-CV exhibited good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.94) and demonstrated good concurrent validity against the SAS (r = 0.52, p = 0.018) and the BAI (r = 0.560, p = 0.000). Item response theory (IRT) analyses showed that the items of the GAI-CV exhibited high difficulty (0.97-2) and discrimination parameters (1.91-5.33). The items exhibited information parameters greater than 1.25 with the exceptions of items 2, 12, and 18. The GAI-CV scores were significantly associated with gender, age, and chronic disease. However, no significant differences due to marriage or education were found.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The GAI is a new scale that was specifically designed to measure anxiety in older people. The results of this study suggest that the GAI-CV had good psychometric properties, but some items need to be modified. IRT analyses indicated that the GAI-CV provided good measures of anxiety across the moderately high to very high levels. The GAI-CV may be a useful instrument for further research studies aimed at analyzing high-level anxiety among older adults in China.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xin
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Dahua
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Center for Population and Development Studies, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tang
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D002681:China; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012737:Sex Factors; D014175:Translating