Any knowledge in State-Trait Anxiety Inventory?

Xeno

Hey guys, I administered a State-Trait anxiety "test" I guess you could call it. One was how you felt at that moment before an interview, one was after, and one was how you generally felt.

For the state score before the interview, it was 57, and after the interview, it was 53.

For the trait score, it was 45.

-The problem I am having is I don't know what these numbers mean. For the state score, is it the higher the number, the more anxiety? Is 57 high? I have no idea. What about the trait score? What does 45 mean? Is there a chart for these numbers? All I have with me are the tests.


Thanks a lot guys.

Daenris

In general yes, the higher the score on the STAI the more anxious the person. The idea of the measure is that the "state" is supposed to be a good estimate of your current anxiety level, while the "trait" is supposed to estimate your general level of anxiety. The score ranges from 20-80 on each section.

Can I ask why you're trying to interpret these scores? The STAI should not be used for a diagnosis. It just gives a rough estimate of anxiety levels/symptoms. To get an idea of general ranges for different populations you'd either need to look up research papers using the STAI, or actually have the scoring material from the STAI manual, which includes ranges for a few different populations.

Xeno

Daenris wrote: »

In general yes, the higher the score on the STAI the more anxious the person. The idea of the measure is that the "state" is supposed to be a good estimate of your current anxiety level, while the "trait" is supposed to estimate your general level of anxiety. The score ranges from 20-80 on each section.

Can I ask why you're trying to interpret these scores? The STAI should not be used for a diagnosis. It just gives a rough estimate of anxiety levels/symptoms. To get an idea of general ranges for different populations you'd either need to look up research papers using the STAI, or actually have the scoring material from the STAI manual, which includes ranges for a few different populations.

Ohh, I am not diagnosing anyone. I just read about it, so I decided to try it out on a friend who agreed who went in for a job interview. I found the tests and just wanted to try it out on a friend. Only thing I did not have was the scores tables, and what the numbers meant. I had these 3 numbers and didn't know how to interpret them.

Like I have no idea if 57 is high or not.

The test doesn't really make sense to me though. On the state test, a few of the questions are things that wouldn't be considered anxiety, such as "I feel calm", yet putting a 4 for "very much so" would just increase your score in the end, which would mean you have more anxiety. If I answered low on the questions that show anxiety, and high on the questions that don't show anxiety, I would get a large number showing anxiety.

I don't really get it at all.

Daenris

It sounds like you don't have scoring information for the STAI, because some items are reverse-scored (a 4 scores 1 point, a 1 scores 4, etc).

So it's likely that your 57 is not actually the correct final score. The questions which are reverse-scored should be fairly obvious.

Unfortunately, due to it being a commercial psychological measure, I can't really provide the proper scoring or manual information.