The Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire: development and preliminary validity

Heart-focused anxiety (HFA) is the fear of cardiac-related stimuli and sens ations because of their perceived negative consequences. Although HFA is co mmon to a wide variety of persons who experience chest pain and distress. i t often is unrecognized and misdiagnosed, particularly in cardiology and em ergency room patients without and with heart disease. To address these conc erns, this article reports on the development and preliminary psychometric evaluation of the Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire (CAQ) designed to measure H FA. In Study 1, 188 cardiology patients completed the CAQ. Item and factor analyses indicated a three-factor solution pertaining to heart-related fear , avoidance, and attention. Reliability analysis of the 18-item CAQ reveale d good internal consistency of the total and subscale scores. In Study 2, 4 2 patients completed the CAQ and several other anxiety-related questionnair es to assess its convergent and divergent properties, Although preliminary validity results are promising, further psychometric study is necessary to cross-validate the CAQ, examine its test-retest reliability, and confirm th e stability of the factor structure. Taken together, the CAQ appears to ass ess I-IFA, and may therefore be a useful instrument for identifying patient s with elevated HFA without and with heart disease. (C) 2000 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.