Construção e propriedades psicométricas da Escala de Ansiedade – ESCAN

Abstract

The cognitive model of anxiety proposed by the work of Clark and Beck (2012) already exists in the literature, which takes into account cognitive, physiological, behavioral and affective symptoms of anxiety. However, according to the analysis carried out in the systematic review carried out in this work, the instruments available today do not assess all the characteristic dimensions of anxiety, for the most part. Therefore, the need to build a new scale that included all these dimensions was noted. Thus, the objective of this study is to build an instrument, the Anxiety Scale (ESCAN), to assess anxiety in adults aged 18 to 65 years. To achieve this, the first step was to carry out a systematic literature review in the databases PubMed, PsychINFO, SciELO, Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde - VHL and Web of Science, in order to map which scales already existed and how ESCAN could differentiate itself. 49 studies were included, covering 14 assessment instruments. Taking into account the systematic literature review, the work of Clark and Beck (2012) and the Transdiagnostic Model of mental disorders, the 61 ESCAN items were constructed based on 8 dimensions initially proposed. After this stage, content validation was carried out by the judges. The results indicate moderate agreement (64%) for the dimensions as a whole, according to the Landis & Koch (1977) cutoff points. Subsequently, a pilot study was carried out to evaluate the understanding of the items in a sample of 15 people with levels of education ranging from incomplete elementary school to postgraduate studies. The results demonstrated that 57 items were understood by 100% of the evaluators. Finally, ESCAN was applied to a sample of 422 people, remotely, using an online form, and spiral collection. The model that best fit the data was the bifactor model with six specific factors identified by exploratory graph analysis - EGA. The results indicate that the fit indices were adequate for the initial internal structure of ESCAN.