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This research aimed to provide new psychometric evidence of the Argentine Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) version in a sample of adults from Argentina. More specifically, the objectives were: 1) test the factor structure of the BAI; 2) assess gender, education, age, and region invariance; 3) test the latent factor mean difference across gender, education, age, and region; 4) analyze the reliability of the BAI; 5) provide population-based norms. The sample was composed of 1,410 adults ranging between 18 and 65 years (M = 32.41; SD = 10.45). Results showed that the BAI should be interpreted as unidimensional. Full configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender, education, age, and region were obtained for the unidimensional model. The BAI presented adequate reliability values. Latent mean comparisons showed that men experienced more anxiety than women, that college-educated experienced more anxiety than non-college, that older people experienced more anxiety than younger people, and that people living in Greater Buenos Aires experienced more anxiety than those from Buenos Aires City. The BAI is an invariant measure of anxiety symptoms with good psychometric properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent worldwide, followed by depressive disorders. The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck et al., 1988) has been developed to assess the severity of anxiety symptoms and perform a differential diagnosis between anxiety and depression disorders. Objective: To examine the temporal stability of the BAI in its version adapted to Argentina and obtain evidence of discriminant validity. Method: In a sample of 52 people, the intraclass correlation coefficient was analyzed. Then, in a sample of 225 people, a correlation analysis between BAI scores and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck et al., 2006) was performed; subsequently, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with reagents from both instruments was conducted and the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) was calculated. Results: The intraclass correlation coefficient was .82 (95% CI = .69 - .90). The correlation between the BAI and the BDI was .56 (moderate effect size). The EFA showed two well-differentiated factors and an HTMT proportion value of .66 (95% CI = .55 - .74) was found. Conclusions: An adequate temporal stability is observed and evidence of the discriminant validity of the instrument is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]