AFI
Anxiety Forms Inventory
This exploratory questionnaire profiles the forms anxiety takes: pervasive worry, panic attacks, fear of judgment, feared situations, health worries, and physical tension. It helps clarify a presenting complaint of anxiety in the first sessions and tailor treatment to the form that predominates.
- Number of questions
- 24 questions
- Estimated duration
- 6 minutes
- Language
- English
- Original name
- Anxiety Forms Inventory
- Target audience
- Adults
- Category
- Phobias, Panic disorder, Anxiety
- Exploratory questionnaire
- Exploratory questionnaire
Preview of the 24 questions
Scoring & interpretation
Scoring
| Physical tension | 11 / 16 |
Physical signs of background anxiety: muscle tension, nervousness, difficulty relaxing, somatic complaints.
Areas to explore: when the tension appears, its link with sleep and fatigue, what the person already does to relax.
| Pervasive worry | 10 / 16 |
Frequent worries that are hard to stop, about a range of everyday matters.
Areas to explore: the themes of worry, how much time they take up, what the person does to reassure themselves.
See also: Rumination and Worry Inventory.
| Feared situations | 9 / 16 |
Intense fear of certain places, situations, or objects, and the resulting avoidance (public transportation, crowds, enclosed spaces, animals, etc.).
Areas to explore: the situations avoided, what the person fears will happen there, what makes them bearable (having someone along, having a way out).
| Panic attacks | 8 / 16 |
Sudden surges of anxiety with intense physical sensations, and fear that they will happen again.
Areas to explore: the circumstances of the attacks, their frequency, how the person interprets their sensations, any avoidance that has developed since.
| Health worries | 6 / 16 |
Fear of having or developing a serious illness, monitoring of the body, and reassurance seeking.
Areas to explore: the illnesses feared, checking and searching for information, repeated doctor visits or, conversely, avoidance of doctors.
| Fear of judgment | 3 / 16 |
Fear of being watched, evaluated, or looking foolish in social situations.
Areas to explore: the situations feared, safety behaviors, the impact on social and work life.
No validated clinical or psychometric cutoffs have been established for this test yet. The results should therefore be considered exploratory indicators, meant to support the clinical interview, not diagnostic findings.
Scoring
Each statement is scored from 0 (never) to 4 (very often) based on its frequency over the past month. Each domain combines 4 statements spread throughout the questionnaire, giving a score from 0 to 16.
Reading the profile
There is no total score. Domains are ranked from most to least elevated, each with a description of what it covers and points to explore in the interview. The profile shows which forms of anxiety predominate. It is common for several domains to be elevated at once; the interview then establishes which form is primary and which ones follow from it.
Limitations
This exploratory questionnaire has not undergone psychometric validation and has no cutoffs. It supports the clinical interview and does not provide a diagnosis.
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