Dresden Anxiety Dictionary (DAW)

The Gottschalk-Gleser-Scales

The Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis was developed by Louis A. Gottschalk & Goldine C. Gleser in 1969. It is a content analysis technique for the measurement of affects. "Affects are feeling states that have attributes of quality and quantity. Affects and emotions have subjective, purely psychological components as well as physiological, biochemical, and behavioral concomitants." (Gottschalk & Gleser, 1969, p. 14)

Book: Gottschalk and Gleser, 1969

Important principles are:

Affects have influence on thinking and speech.

By the measurement of speech it is possible to measure the size of affects.

The size of an affect is influenced by the frequency of the affect, the personal involvement and the directness.

The personal involvement and the directness may be described by mathematical factors.

They are influenced by defence and adaptation mechanisms.

The size of an affect may be measured from the product of the frequency and a weight factor investigated from the personal involvement.

		Important principles are: Affects have influence on thinking and speech. By the measurement of speech it is possible to measure the size of affects. The size of an affect is influenced by the frequency of the affect, the personal involvement and the directness. The personal involvement and the directness may be described by mathematical factors. They are influenced by defence and adaptation mechanisms. The size of an affect may be measured from the product of the frequency and a weight factor investigated from the personal involvement.

Gottschalk & Gleser described a lot of different content analysis scales:

Anxiety Scale

Hostility Scale

(Schizophrenic) Social Alienation and Personal Disorganization

Cognitive and Intellectual Impairment Scale

Depression Scale

"Hope" Scale

Our main focus is on anxiety, the anxiety scale consists of six sub scales:

Death anxiety - references to death, dying, threat of death, or anxiety about death
Mutilation (castration) anxiety - references to injury, tissue, or physical damage, or anxiety about injury or threat of such
Separation anxiety - references to desertation, abandonment, loneliness, ostracism, loss of support, falling, loss of love or love object, or threat of such
Guilt anxiety - references to adverse criticism, abuse, condemnation, moral disapproval, guilt, or threat of such
Shame anxiety - references to ridicule, inadequacy, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, overexposure of deficiencies or private details, or threat of such
Diffuse or nonspecific anxiety - references to anxiety or fear without distinguishing type or source of anxiety

To measure anxiety (or the other scales) you need texts. Texts can be produced by 5-minute verbal samples with the following standard instruction: "This is a study of speaking and conversation habit. I would like to talk to you for five minutes about any personal interesting or dramatic life experience you have ever had. If you finish telling about one life event, you can continue on telling about another one until the five minutes is over. While you are talking I would prefer not to reply to any questions you have until the five minutes is over. If you have any questions, I will be happy to respond to them now." (Gottschalk & Bechtel, 1993, p. 15)

The text must be transcripted and analyzed according to very strict rules, described in Gottschalk, Winget & Gleser (1969) or in Schöfer (1980, in German). The result are row scores which must be calculated to scores by the following formulas (formula 1 for the six sub scales, formula 2 for the total anxiety score)

Formula 1 (S=score, WZ=number of words, R=row score)

Formula 2 (ZS=total score, WZ=number of words, R1 to Rn=row score of the subscales)

The Gottschalk-Gleser-Scales were used in many fields like in psychosocial research or biomedical research (for an overview see Gottschalk, 1995). The validity and reliability of the scales were checked often, they are very satisfying. For English samples norms are available. The Gottschalk-Gleser analysis is done manually very expensively and needs a very experienced rater, that's why Gottschalk and colleagues developed a computer program for the analysis of English speech samples (Gottschalk 1985, 1994, 1995, 1997; Gottschalk & Bechtel 1982, 1989, 1993, 1995; Gottschalk, Hausmann & Brown, 1975; Gottschalk, Stein & Shapiro, 1997). But for German speech samples, in spite of the wide use by German researchers, a computer version of the scales was not available.

Hendrik Berth