Psychometric Evidence of the 7-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire in Brazil

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most prevalent and impairing psychological disorders. GAD is defined as a persistent and excessive worry associated with physical and psychological symptoms. Despite the potentially severe nature of GAD, it has been estimated that nearly half of patients live with the symptoms for about 2 years before being appropriately diagnosed and treated. To allow early identification of this disorder, valid and reliable measures for the screening of GAD are essential. Therefore, the present study aimed to gather psychometric evidence of the 7-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) in Brazil (N = 746). The findings suggested a stable one-factor structure (CFI = .99; TLI = .99; RMSEA = .05) that is likely to be replicated (H-Latent = .92; H-Observed = .86) and have excellent reliability (omega = .91; CR = .91). Furthermore, the GAD-7 correlated positively with the DASS-21 stress (r = .73), depression (r = .53), and anxiety (r = .60) factors, along with the Groningen Sleep Quality Scale (r = .45) and the personality trait of neuroticism (r = .49), supporting its convergent validity. Finally, the GAD-7 is able to differentiate between participants with mild, moderate, and severe level of anxiety. Taken together, the present findings indicate that the GAD-7 is a suitable psychometric measure to assess generalized anxiety disorder in Brazil.