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HIS study is part of a program of research that seeks to provide operational definitions for clinically important variables. The necessity for such research is illustrated by Grayson and Tolman's semantic study of clinical concepts. They had clinical psychologists and psychiatrists define 50 terms frequently used in psychological reports, e.g., aggression, anxiety, dependent, hostility, rigidity. The results indicated marked variability in definition, and the authors concluded:The most striking finding of the study is the looseness and ambiguity of the definitions of many of these terms. Up to the present time, verbalization and conceptualization have clearly lagged behind the useful clinical application of psychological terms (2, p. 229).

Anxiety has been measured in a variety of ways, but there is little general agreement among measures. A possible source of this disagreement is the methodological problems involved in evaluating anxiety. The problems encountered in measuring clinical anxiety are primarily those of definition and reliability of measurement. Because the term "anxiety" has a variety of behavioral referents, the operational definition should be explicit, and the behaviors labelled "anxious" should be specified. When anxious behavior is rated in clinical situations, there should be several judges and a statement of interjudge agreement.Two previous studies illustrate attempts at solving these problems. Gleser and Ulett attempted to measure "anxiety-proneness," which was defined as "the present mental status, past history of anxiety, background and personality development that would indicate the occurrence of anxiety symptoms in a stressful situation" (4, p. 280). A psychiatrist and a psychologist used an eight-point scale to rate anxiety-proneness. The interrater reliabilities were .51 for patients and .30 for normals. Elizur defined anxiety as "an inner state of insecurity which may take one or more of the following forms: fears, phobias, lack of self-confidence, extreme shyness, ideas of reference, and marked sensitivity" (3, p. 248). From protocols of interviews with college students three judges made anxiety ratings on a nine-point scale. The average interrater correlation was .70.In evaluating these two studies it may be 1 This study was carried out with the permission and encouragement of Juul Nielson, M.D. The writers are indebted to Drs. Charles Windle and Leonard Goodstein for their critical reading of the manuscript.

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