Seven items, a two-week recall period and a 0 to 21 score. The GAD-7 is the default anxiety measure in primary care research and a common secondary endpoint in trials. Copy it into your study with the exact response scale.
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GAD-7 · Baseline
Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by:
1. Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge
2. Not being able to stop or control worrying
GAD-7 at a glance
The instrument
Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams and Löwe published the GAD-7 in 2006 as a brief measure for generalised anxiety disorder in primary care. Its seven items were selected from a larger pool for how well they identified the disorder, and in the original validation a cut-off of 10 gave sensitivity and specificity both above 80%.
In trials it is used as a secondary efficacy endpoint in anxiety, depression and insomnia studies, as a safety signal for treatments that might increase anxiety, and as a baseline characteristic in behavioural and digital health research. Because it takes about two minutes, it adds almost nothing to participant burden.
Sum the seven items for a total between 0 and 21. The GAD-7 also has an optional eighth question about how difficult the problems have made daily life; like the equivalent PHQ-9 question, it is not part of the score. For change over time, define in the analysis plan what counts as response (often a percentage reduction from baseline) and how missing items are handled.
The first two items form the GAD-2, scored 0 to 6. Some studies use it in online pre-screening before the full GAD-7 at the screening visit.
Baseline total
11 / 21
All seven items
Scale for every item: not at all (0), several days (1), more than half the days (2), nearly every day (3). Recall: the last two weeks.
| # | Item | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge | Core anxiety |
| 2 | Not being able to stop or control worrying | Uncontrollable worry |
| 3 | Worrying too much about different things | Excessive worry |
| 4 | Trouble relaxing | Tension |
| 5 | Being so restless that it is hard to sit still | Restlessness |
| 6 | Becoming easily annoyed or irritable | Irritability |
| 7 | Feeling afraid, as if something awful might happen | Apprehension |
Developed by Drs. Robert L. Spitzer, Janet B.W. Williams, Kurt Kroenke and colleagues, with an educational grant from Pfizer Inc. No permission required to reproduce, translate, display or distribute. Use official translations.
Build it in Capture
The template uses single-choice questions with the codes stored alongside the labels, so exports carry both "Several days" and 1. Every item is required, and the form works identically on a participant's phone and on a clinic tablet.
Evening diary
Question 3 of 8
How would you rate your fatigue today?
0 = no fatigue, 10 = worst imaginable
Completion
A GAD-7 completed a week late covers a different fortnight. Completion windows and a reminder ladder keep participants on schedule, and the dashboard shows who is falling behind before the endpoint is affected.
At-risk participants
Both templates are in the free sandbox. Schedule them together and preview on your phone.
Before go-live
Use the published English wording and official translations. Do not adapt items locally.
Self-report or interviewer-read, the same for every participant and visit.
Prevents partial questionnaires that cannot be totalled.
Two weeks or more between administrations.
Cut-offs, response definition and missing-data rules agreed before unblinding.
Preview the participant view in the sandbox before ethics submission.
Yes. It was developed with an educational grant from Pfizer and can be reproduced, translated, displayed and distributed without permission.
Seven items scored 0 to 3 are summed for a total of 0 to 21. Bands: 0 to 4 minimal, 5 to 9 mild, 10 to 14 moderate, 15 to 21 severe.
A total of 10 or more is the usual cut-off for probable generalised anxiety disorder.
It was designed for generalised anxiety disorder but also performs reasonably as a screen for panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and PTSD.
The last two weeks, the same as the PHQ-9.
Yes. It runs in the phone browser from a secure link, with no app to install.
Yes, in the free sandbox with the full template library.
Keep exploring
PHQ-9 eCRF template
The depression scale usually given alongside.
Insomnia Severity Index template
Sleep outcomes in anxiety studies.
EDC for psychiatry trials
Running rating scales across sites.
Mood tracker template
Daily mood diary between visits.
eCOA software
PRO, ClinRO, ObsRO and PerfO in one place.
How to capture PROs digitally
Moving questionnaires off paper.
Copy the GAD-7 template and schedule it in minutes. Free sandbox, no credit card.