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Reliability and factorial structure of the Chinese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory

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Abstract

The Chinese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was administered to 2150 Chinese secondary-school students. Reliability data revealed that the A-State and A-Trait scales had a high internal consistency, and high item-total correlations were found for most of the items under each scale. Factor analytic data showed that while two factors were abstracted from the A-Trait scale (Anxiety Present and Anxiety Absent), two (Anxiety Present and Anxiety Absent) or three (Anxiety Present, Calmness, and Happiness) factors were abstracted from the A-State scale. By randomly splitting the total sample into two subsamples, factors extracted from the first two factor-solutions could be reproduced reliably and high coefficients of congruence were found. These findings generally suggest that the Chinese A-State and A-Trait scales possess acceptable psychometric properties and the factor analytic data tend to support Spielberger's conception of the multidimensional nature of the A-State and A-Trait scales.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

    Daniel T. L. Shek

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This work was supported by UPGC Grant CPAS/714.

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Shek, D.T.L. Reliability and factorial structure of the Chinese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 10, 303–317 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00960624

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