Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) and its short form GAI-SF: Czech normative study

Objectives. The aim of this study is to examine psychometric properties (reliability, intercorrelations, distribution of scores, analyze the items, influence of demographic variables) and present the percentile norms of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) and its short form GAI-SF, which focus on detecting anxiety in older persons. Sample and setting. 485 mentally healthy persons older than 60 years of age from 12 regions of the Czech Republic have passed the GAI, which, using 20 items with Yes and No answers, examines anxiety in older individuals. The influence of age, education and sex was examined. Statistical analyses. Data were analyzed with Spearman's and point-biserial correlation coefficients, tetrachoric correlations, Mann-Whitney U test and McDonald's omega. Results. Statistical analysis revealed the effect of sex on the GAI and GAI-SF results, which is in line with the theory that women are more anxious. The influence of education and age was not significant. The study provides normative GAI and GAI-SF data on a large sample of older persons from the Czech population adjusted by sex. Study limitations. The main limits of the study are non-administering of both versions but only the full version of GAI from which GAI-SF results were extracted, and examination of nonclinical sample.