Recomendaciones para la utilización de la adaptación española del Inventario de Ansiedad de Beck (BAI) en la práctica clínica

In its 25 years of existence, the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) has become the most widely used self-report instrument for assessing the severity of anxiety in the countries with higher research productivity in psychology, although in Spain this instrument is still the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). This paper presents the basic characteristics of the BAI in comparison with the Trait Anxiety scale of the STAI, describes the process of adaptation of the BAI to the Spanish population, summarizes the psychometric properties of this adaptation, and discusses its use in the clinical practice. To this use, norms and cut-off scores are calculated in order to measure the severity of anxiety, evaluate the clinical significance of therapeutic change, screen for clinical anxiety, and aid in the differential diagnosis of anxiety disorders.