Geriatric Anxiety Scale

The GAS long-form [14] Italian version [22, 27] is a 30-item self-report measure of anxiety symptoms among older adults. Participants were asked to indicate how often they have experienced each symptom during the immediately preceding week, including today. Response format uses a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (always), with higher scores indicating higher levels of anxiety. The GAS-long form covers three different domains of anxiety, which are common among older adults: somatic symptoms, cognitive symptoms, and affective symptoms. The GAS total score is based on the first 25 items. The additional 5 content items investigate areas of anxiety often reported to be of concern for older adults (eg. health and financial concerns). Cronbach’s alpha for the GAS-long form in the present study was good (.90).

A 10-item shortened version, the GAS-10, was developed, using Item Response Theory (IRT) approach, to reduce the burden of administration and scoring time, as well as to pose less burden on respondents [46]. The GAS-10 has strong evidence of reliability and validity for use with diverse samples of community-dwelling, medically ill, and treatment-seeking older adults [32, 33]. In the present study, Cronbach’s alpha was .84.