The WORRY-SR includes 86 items exploring "presence" or "absence" of lifetime symptoms of GAD spectrum organized into six domains: (1) Childhood, (2) Worry, (3) Beliefs about worry, (4) Somatic and emotional symptoms, (5) Cognitive tendencies, and (6) Behavioral and interpersonal tendencies. Item responses are coded dichotomously (yes/no) and total and domain scores are obtained by counting the number of positive answers.

The first domain, "Childhood" explores worry during childhood or adolescence, both about interpersonal relationships and about "potentially dangerous" situations. The second domain, "Worry," is designed to capture the generality, excessiveness, and uncontrollability of the spectrum phenomenology of worry. This domain encompasses six subcategories: A) "General" focuses on worrying about the future; B) "Illness/health/injury" focuses on the state of a person's health or the health of those the person loves C) "Family/home/interpersonal" focuses on concerns regarding other persons; D) "Financial" focuses on worrying about spending money unwisely or concerns about can not afford unexpected financial issues; E) "Work/school" focuses on the feeling that can not live up to the expectations of the teachers/boss F) "Travel" focuses on apprehension about getting lost, having an accident or not bringing everything needed.

The third domain "Beliefs about worry" explores the "meta-worry" that is a variable consisting of the negative appraisal of worry. A useful way to think of meta-worry is as worrying about worrying. The fourth domain "Somatic and emotional symptoms" investigates somatic and emotional symptoms that are associated with hyperarousal. The fifth domain "Cognitive tendencies" describes typical thoughts that an anxious person endorses such as the thought the world is full of dangers or the thought that something terrible had happened if someone is late. The last domain "Behavioral and interpersonal tendencies" includes behaviours related to experiential avoidance that play a significant role in maintaining pathological behavioural and cognitive repertoires.

Scoring

See algorithm section, below on this page for how to score the instrument.

Psychometric Properties

M. Mauri, A.Oppo, S. Banti, S. Calugi, P. Rucci, A. Fagiolini, J. D. Maser, V. J. Grochocinski, C. Bolognese, O. Bacci, B. Ciaponi, M. K. Shear, G. B. Cassano, E. Frank.: Validity and reliability of the WORRY-SR: A dimensional approach to the assessment of GAD spectrum, submitted to International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 2011.

Note: each items is scored as "0" (NO), "1" (YES).
(1) worry during childhood or adolescence	sum of items 1-15
(2) Worry	sum of items 16-44
(3) Beliefs about worry	sum of items 45-51
(4) Somatic and emotional symptoms	sum of items 52-66
(5) Cognitive tendencies	sum of items 67-75
(6) Behavioral and interpersonal tendencies	sum of items 76-86