The Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Worry Domains Questionnaire: structure, reliability and validity

Abstract

In this study the psychometric properties of the PSWQ and the WDQ were investigated in a community sample. The PSWQ proved to be unidimensional although the results indicated that the negatively keyed items contributed less to the general factor. Internal reliability of the PSWQ was satisfactory. Confirmatory analysis of the WDQ indicated that some alternations with regard to the content of the different domains had to be made. Furthermore, an additional health worry domain was included in the scale. This resulted in a revised revision of the WDQ. Internal reliability of the WDQ-R was satisfactory, as well as consistencies of the different domains, with the exception of the Work Incompetence domain. High to moderate correlations were found between the two worry scales and measures of trait anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive behaviour. In studying the relative impact of these constructs on worry it was found that the predictors accounted for 62 and 61% of the variance in the PSWQ and the WDQ-R respectively, providing further evidence for the separate construct of worry. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.