State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI): State-trait anxiety distinction

About the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)

Anxiety assessment in the 1960s was confused by failure to distinguish between current emotional state and stable personality disposition. A patient might report high anxiety on a questionnaire because they were anxious at that moment (perhaps due to the testing situation itself) - or because they had a chronic disposition toward anxiety across many situations. These two constructs were theoretically distinct but were often confounded by existing instruments.

Charles Spielberger at the University of South Florida set out to operationalize the distinction. The 1970 State-Trait Anxiety Inventory has two parallel 20-item scales: State Anxiety (S-Anxiety), measuring how the subject feels 'right now, at this moment,' and Trait Anxiety (T-Anxiety), measuring how the subject 'generally feels.' The two scales use similar item content but different temporal framing.

The STAI became extraordinarily widely used. Over 14,000 published studies have used the STAI. It is the most-cited anxiety instrument in the research literature. The state-trait distinction operationalized by the STAI is now standard in anxiety research and has been adopted by many subsequent instruments. The STAI is administered ~6 million times annually in clinical practice.

The 2 subtests

Sample Items (Illustrative)

Items are presented as statements with a 4-point Likert scale response format. Respondents indicate the degree to which each statement applies to them, either in the moment (State) or in general (Trait). Scoring involves summing responses to assess anxiety levels.

These are illustrative samples, not actual items from the protected test.

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Charles D. Spielberger (1970). State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).

STAI items remain under Mind Garden copyright. We document the instrument's history and significance.