Preliminary Cross-Cultural Validity Study of Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale

Research on anxiety in non-Western societies has generally assumed an item or response equivalence across cultures. Hence, research has generally used translated forms of inventories such as Taylor's Manifest Anxiety Scale and Spiel berger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, checking only for semantic equivalence and ignoring the problems of item content and typical response modes. To clarify the viability of these assumptions, the 50-item Manifest Anxiety Scale was administered to groups of South African Europeans and South African Indians, both of whom varied in education. Results suggest that the Taylor scale is sensitive to certain cross-cultural differences and that care should be taken in interpreting the results of the scale when used on non-Western societies, irrespective of educational level.