BACKGROUND:

There is comorbidity between respiratory disease and anxiety. In order to measure the anxiety of hospitalized patients it is necessary to use reliable and valid, and preferably short questionnaires.

OBJECTIVE:

To analyze the reliability and validity of a shortened version of the state subscale of the “State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)” in respiratory patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS:

A total of 103 respiratory patients admitted to the respiratory ward between February of 2009 and February of 2010 were non-consecutively selected. They answered two questionnaires: the Spanish version of the STAI-state and a short version consisting of 7 items. Sociodemographic and clinical variables of the patients were also obtained. The internal consistency, and convergent and construct validity of the short scale were analyzed.

RESULTS:

The short scale did not have floor/ceiling effect, the α-Cronbach was acceptable (0.89), and correlated positively (r = 0.90; P = .01) and also maintained the factorial structure of the original scale (half anxiety-present items and half anxiety-absent items).

CONCLUSIONS:

The short version of the state subscale of the STAI has showed good metric properties in hospitalized respiratory patients.

Copyright © 2010 SEPAR. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.