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Weekly assessment of worry: an adaptation of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire for monitoring changes during treatment
Open accessAbstract
Development and validation of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 28, 487-495.] for weekly assessment of worry was evaluated in a brief treatment study. Cognitive restructuring techniques were taught to 28 nonclinical high-worriers, 14 of whom served as a control group in a lagged waiting-list design. Results showed that the Penn State Worry Questionnaire-Past Week (PSWQ-PW) was highly reliable and substantially valid in the assessment of both (a) weekly status of worry and (b) treatment-related changes in worry: average Cronbach's alpha was 0.91; average convergent correlation with a past-week adaptation of the Worry Domains Questionnaire [Tallis, F., Eysenck, M. W. and Mathews, A. (1992). A questionnaire for the measurement of nonpathological worry. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 161-168.] was 0.63 and pre-post improvement on PSWQ-PW showed a 0.71 correlation with the Questionnaire of Changes in Experiencing and Behavior [Zielke, M. and Kopf-Mehnert, C. (1978). Veränderungsfragebogen des Erlebens und Verhaltens. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz Test Gesellschaft.]. It is concluded that the PSWQ-PW is a useful instrument for monitoring pathological worry in experimental and applied settings.
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“The PSWQ -PW has strong reliability and good convergent validity with other measures of weekly worry (Puccinelli et al ., 2022; Stöber and Bittencourt, 1998).”
From Effectiveness and predictors of group cognitive behaviour therapy outcome for generalised anxiety disorder in an out-patient hospital setting (2024) · cites this paper as Stöber and Bittencourt, 1998
In the citing paper
“Amongst clinical GAD subjects, the PSWQ and PSWQ-PW have demonstrated high internal consistency and good test-retest reliability (Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990; Stoeber & Bittencourt, 1998).”
From Facets of Mindfulness in Adults with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Impact of Co-occurring Depression (2019) · cites this paper as Stoeber & Bittencourt, 1998
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Citations
Cites
Reliability and Validity Assessment
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“A child and adolescent version has been developed (Chorpita, Tracey, Brown, Collica, & Barlow, 1997), as has a weekly assessment version that allows for measurement of change across brief time periods ( Stober & Bittencourt, 1998 ).”
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“The Penn State Worry Questionnaire – Past Week (PSWQ-PW; Stöber & Bittencourt, 1998) is an adaptation of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer et al., 1990 ) that assesses the level of worry during the last week and that will be used to identify sudden gains.”
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“The Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer et al ., 1990; Stober and Bittencourt, 1998), is a 15-item measure adapted for weekly assessment of worry, used to assess severity of problematic worry in the GAD groups (Cronbach ’ s α = .89, .”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Stöber, J., & Bittencourt, J.
- Affiliations
- Freie Universität Berlin (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Stöber, Joachim
- Venue
- Behaviour Research and Therapy
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1998-06
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 645-656
- ISSN
- 0005-7967 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2003107068
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 1.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Behaviour Research and Therapy (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Kent Academic Repository (University of Kent) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Universität Greifswald
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychological Treatments and Assessments
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Keywords
- Penn State Worry Questionnaire, pathological worry, treatment monitoring, cognitive restructuring, questionnaire adaptation, reliability and validity
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Anxiety, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Regression Analysis, Reproducibility of Results, Outcome Assessment, Health Care
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