ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1582398
Psychometric properties of the Arabic Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-5) in a nonclinical sample of Arabic-speaking adults
Provisionally accepted
Toni Sawma1Pio Abd El Nour2
Diana Malaeb3
Fouad Sakr4
Mariam Dabbous4Sami El- Khatib4
Feten Fekih-Romdhane5
Souheil Hallit2
Sahar Obeid1*- 1Lebanese American University, Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
- 2Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Jounieh, Mount Lebanon, Lebanon
- 3Gulf Medical University, Ajman, Ajman, United Arab Emirates
- 4Lebanese International University, Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
- 5Hôpital Razi, Manouba, Tunisia
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Background: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a highly prevalent psychological disorder with a frequent distribution among the general population and in primary care configurations. GAD-5 is one of the many present scales with little research on, but has the potential to orient clinical decisions due to its unique features. Validating a simple and cost-effective tool to assess the GAD in the Arabic-speaking population, primarily residing in the Middle-East and North-Africa (MENA) region, would be highly beneficial. The study aimed to translate GAD-5 into Arabic and evaluate its psychometric properties, including internal reliability, sex invariance, composite reliability, and correlation with a measure of psychological distress.Methods: A total of 629 Arabic-speaking adults were recruited in May 2023. A self-administered anonymous survey was distributed through social media using a Google Forms link. We used the SPSS AMOS software v.28 to conduct the confirmatory factor analysis of the GAD-5 scale.The fit indices deriving from the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the onefactor model of the GAD items was acceptable. The convergent validity for this model and the internal consistency of the scale were good. Configural, metric, and scalar invariance was supported across sex. A higher mean anxiety score was seen in females compared to males.Higher GAD-5 scores were significantly associated with higher anxiety, depression and stress as measured by the Depression, Anxiety and Stress 8 items (DASS-8) scale, showing convergent and concurrent validity.Our findings confirmed the briefness, validity and reliability of the Arabic version of the GAD-5 scale which support its employment as a screening tool in the general population.Considering these results, we advise using it for therapeutic and research motives among the Arabic-speaking individuals.
Keywords: generalized anxiety disorder, psychometric properties, Arabic, Lebanon, GAD-5
Received: 24 Feb 2025; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sawma, Abd El Nour, Malaeb, Sakr, Dabbous, El- Khatib, Fekih-Romdhane, Hallit and Obeid. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sahar Obeid, Lebanese American University, Beirut, 1102 2801, Beirut, Lebanon
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