Psychometric Evidence of the 7-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire in Brazil
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Psychometric Evidence of the 7-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire in Brazil Renan P. Monteiro 1 & Bruna S. Nascimento 2 & Tatiana Medeiros Costa Monteiro 3 & Phillip Dyamond Gomes da Silva 1 & Ana Júlia Cândida Ferreira 1 Accepted: 24 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most prevalent and impairing psychological disorders. GAD is defined as a persistent and excessive worry associated with physical and psychological symptoms. Despite the potentially severe nature of GAD, it has been estimated that nearly half of patients live with the symptoms for about 2 years before being appropriately diagnosed and treated. To allow early identification of this disorder, valid and reliable measures for the screening of GAD are essential. Therefore, the present study aimed to gather psychometric evidence of the 7-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) in Brazil (N = 746). The findings suggested a stable one-factor structure (CFI = .99; TLI = .99; RMSEA = .05) that is likely to be replicated (H-Latent = .92; H-Observed = .86) and have excellent reliability (ω = .91; CR = .91). Furthermore, the GAD-7 correlated positively with the DASS-21 stress (r = .73), depression (r = .53), and anxiety (r = .60) factors, along with the Groningen Sleep Quality Scale (r = .45) and the personality trait of neuroticism (r = .49), supporting its convergent validity. Finally, the GAD-7 is able to differentiate between participants with mild, moderate, and severe level of anxiety. Taken together, the present findings indicate that the GAD-7 is a suitable psychometric measure to assess generalized anxiety disorder in Brazil. Keywords Generalized anxiety disorder . Mental health . GAD-7 . Psychometrics . Validity
* Renan P. Monteiro [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Fernando Correa da Costa Avenue, 2367, Cuiabá, MT 78060-900, Brazil
2
Division of Psychology, Brunel University London, London, UK
3
Centro de Estudos da Família e do Indivíduo, Porto Alegre, Brazil
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most impairing psychological disorders and is highly prevalent among patients accessing primary health care (Baldwin et al. 2012; Plummer et al., 2015). GAD is defined as a chronic, multifocal, and excessive worry that is difficult to control along with dysfunctional physical and psychological symptoms (Stein and Sareen 2015). Anxiety disorders affect millions of people around the world, particularly those from developing countries such as Brazil, which has the highest prevalence of anxiety disorders (World Health Organization 2017). However, most studies on GAD are limited to WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and developed) countries with similar cultural values (Ruscio et al. 2017). Studies on the nature and prevalence of GAD across different cultural contexts (non-WEIRD countries) ar
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