State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety: psychometric properties and experimental manipulation to evaluate sensitivity to change and predictive validity

The State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety (STICSA; Ree, French, MacLeod, & Locke, 2008) is a relatively new measure of state and trait anxiety that contains somatic and cognitive anxiety subscales. The current research investigated the reliability and validity of the STICSA. In the first study, a large sample of undergraduate students completed a battery of self-report questionnaires online, including measures of anxiety, depression, personality features, and quality of life. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis provided support for a four-factor model of the STICSA (i.e., state-somatic, state-cognitive, trait-somatic, and trait-cognitive factors) as well as for a hierarchical model of the STICSA including a global anxiety factor plus four specific factors corresponding to the STICSA subscales. Pearson product-moment correlations provided evidence of the convergent and divergent validity of the STICSA. Comparisons between the validity of the STICSA and the validity of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983) revealed advantages of the STICSA over the STAI. In the second study, a sample of undergraduate students filled out the same battery of self-report measures in small groups. Participants were then randomly assigned to either prepare a speech or watch a preview of a television documentary. Subsequently, all participants completed the state versions of the STICSA and ST AI for a second time. Results from the second study indicated that the somatic subscale of the STICSA is able to detect changes in somatic anxiety over time and provided evidence that scores on the trait version of the STICSA and its subscales are predictive of scores on the state version of the STICSA and its subscales after a social challenge. Results from both studies indicated that the somatic subscale of the STICSA measures unique aspects of anxiety which enhances the clinical utility of the STICSA.