Developed by Dr. Robert L. Spitzer and colleagues,[1] the GAD-7 is commonly used in both clinical settings and research to identify GAD and to monitor treatment outcomes.
[2] A systematic review compared screening tools and concluded that the GAD-7 is the most efficient one for identifying GAD as well as panic disorders in primary care populations.
The consensus is that it can efficient tool for screening for GAD and assessing its severity in clinical practice and research.
[15] A meta-analysis found that it achieved acceptable accuracy at a cutoff point of 8 (sensitivity of 0.83, specificity: 0.84, pooling 12 samples and 5223 participants).
[16] The use of sumscores (i.e. summing the scores of each item) is supported by psychometric studies in some contexts, but using techniques based on factor analysis are deemed more precise.