Construction of the Lebanese Anxiety Scale (LAS-10): a new scale to assess anxiety in adult patients

Abstract

Objective: The study objectives were (1) to create a new 10-item scale, the ‘Lebanese Anxiety Scale’ (LAS-10), inspired by the diagnostic criteria of DSM-5, and the HAM-A and STAI scales and (2) to evaluate the performance of this new scale on a sample of Lebanese individuals. Methods: This cross-sectional study enrolled 1332 community dwelling participants between November 2017 and March 2018. Results: In sample 1, the participants’ mean age was 28.08 years (63.9% females). The LAS items converged over a solution of two factors that had an Eigenvalue over 1, explaining a total of 51.97% of the variance (α_Cronbach=0.857). The optimal cut-off between healthy controls and anxious patients was 13.50 according to the ROC curve. The sensitivity and specificity were good at this cut-off (77.5% and 70.8%, respectively). The area under the curve was high: 0.811 [0.778–0.845]; p < .001. The positive predicted value of the LAS-10 score in sample 1 was 26.9%, whereas the negative predicted value was 95.2%. Conclusion: The results of the present study show that the LAS-10 is a tool that can be used in clinical practice and research to screen for anxiety.