Confirmatory factor analysis of the Beck Anxiety Inventory among Chinese postgraduates

We examined the factor structure of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) with 531 students at 6 universities in Nanjing to evaluate its applicability as a measure of the anxiety of Chinese postgraduates. We performed exploratory factor analysis to identify the potential factor structure of the BAI. We referred to confirmatory factor analysis models from previous studies for model fit. All 7 competing models fitted well with the students’ data. The 4-factor structure proposed by Wetherell and Areán yielded the best fit. Results indicate that the BAI has satisfactory reliability and validity among Chinese postgraduates.