The 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) is a reliable and valid measure of anxiety in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to an analysis of the psychometric properties of the scale.
Researchers administered the GAD-7 to 513 patients, and randomly split the sample to conduct an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and found:
• The scale showed an acceptable internal consistency and was highly correlated with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale–Anxiety.
• GAD-7 scores were higher in women and patients with secondary progressive MS.
• Higher GAD-7 scores were associated with more depressive symptoms.
Citation: Terrill AL, Hartoonian N, Beier M, Salem R, Alschuler K. The 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale as a tool for measuring generalized anxiety in multiple sclerosis. Int J MS Care. 2015;17(2):49-56. doi: 10.7224/1537-2073.2014-008.