Confirmatory factor analysis of the Beck Anxiety Inventory among earthquake survivors in China

We explored the factor structure of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) with a sample of 523 people aged 21–44 years from 4 counties and districts in the city of Ya’an, China, who had survived the 2013 earthquake there. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the potential factor structure of the BAI and confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the goodness of fit of the factor structure model. The results indicated that the BAI had satisfactory reliability and validity but that the factor structure was unstable; therefore, it was difficult to name the 4 extracted factors. However, in general, our results showed that the BAI is an appropriate instrument to use for detecting the anxiety level of earthquake survivors in China.