Overview
The Body Sensations Questionnaire – Adapted (BSQ-adapted) is a 17-item self-report questionnaire assessing fear and worry associated with bodily sensations that may occur when a person is anxious, nervous or in a feared situation. It is an adolescent adaptation of the Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ), originally developed by Chambless, Caputo, Bright and Gallagher (1984) to assess fear of bodily sensations associated with anxiety and panic. The BSQ was adapted for use with adolescents following consultation with young people through patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE). The adaptations were designed to improve the accessibility and acceptability of the questionnaire for young people while retaining the content and structure of the original measure. The BSQ-adapted has subsequently been used in research with adolescents aged 12–17 years, including young people with panic disorder, young people with other anxiety disorders and young people without an anxiety disorder.Scoring & Interpretation
The BSQ-adapted contains 17 items describing bodily sensations that may occur when a young person is nervous or in a feared situation. Respondents indicate how worried or afraid they are of each sensation using five response categories: Not at all, Slightly, Moderately, Very and Extremely. Responses are scored from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating greater fear or worry about bodily sensations associated with anxiety and panic. Consistent with the original BSQ, a mean item score can be calculated, giving a possible mean score range from 1 to 5. The measure is intended to assess the degree of fear associated with bodily sensations rather than the frequency with which the sensations occur. No validated clinical cut-off for the BSQ-adapted in adolescents has been established.Psychometric Properties
Internal Consistency
Test-Retest Reliability
Factor Structure
Validity
Preliminary evidence for the validity of the BSQ-adapted in adolescents has been reported by McCall et al. (2025). Adolescents with panic disorder reported significantly greater fear of bodily sensations than non-anxious community controls (b = –11.02, SE = 3.02, p < .001). The difference between adolescents with panic disorder and adolescents with another anxiety disorder did not reach statistical significance (b = –5.89, SE = 3.09, p = .06). Higher BSQ-adapted scores were also significantly positively associated with greater concurrent panic disorder symptom severity across the sample.
These findings provide preliminary evidence of construct and concurrent validity. However, they also suggest that fear of bodily sensations may not be specific to panic disorder within adolescent clinical anxiety populations.
Measurement Invariance
Access
The BSQ-adapted is publicly available from the Oxford Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma (OxCADAT) as part of the Brief Cognitive Therapy for Panic Disorder in Adolescents resources. The questionnaire pack also provides details of the adaptations made to the original BSQ following consultation with young people.
Users should cite the original measure and relevant adolescent adaptation/evaluation work. Any applicable permissions or licensing requirements should be confirmed with the measure developers/copyright holder where reproduction or redistribution is intended.
https://oxcadatresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/BCT-Panic-Adolescent-Questionnaires_V1.2_16-06-23.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com