Importance Of Psychometric Test Of Anxiety To Curb Insider Threat In Nuclear Facilities

Insider threat in nuclear facilities is a serious concern and needs to be exterminated at the grass root level for the achievement of robust nuclear safety, security and safeguards.Human factor plays a vital role in this process and development of human reliability programmes are very important to achieve safe and secure uses of nuclear materials and facilities for various applications. The human mind is enigmatic and thought process is dynamic in nature. In this context, various psychometric tests can be conducted to assess the personality, ability and integrity of the nuclear personnel.Rigorous psychological testing of nuclear personnel in various level is needed in monthly or weekly basis to counteract the insider threat.But most of the personality tests and there after interpretations of results are time consuming. In this regard, state - trait anxiety inventory (STAI) questionnaire or Beck anxiety inventory (BAI) may be preferable to conduct. Humans tend to exhibit anxiety whenever doing something malevolent and therefore physiological arousal like sweating, panicking etc, takes place. This serves as a background for STAI/BAI psychometric test and by conducting this test on a monthly or weekly basis, one can pinpoint the anxiety levels in an individual.The STAI and BAI consists of 20 and 21 questions respectively, relating to the feelings/mood of individuals at that instant and the test taker have to mark the response on a Likert scale from 1 to 4. Greater scores represent the presence of high anxiety levels and vice versa. Particularly, in STAI, out of 20 questions, half of the questions are reverse scored and questions are jumbled every time to prevent the test taker from pretending the low anxiety levels by marking the responses in a particular accustomed way.As very minimum time is required to conduct STAI test, this test even can be conducted on daily or even hourly basis, whenever and wherever necessary.References:1.Spielberger, C. D., Gorsuch, R. L., Lushene, R., Vagg, P. R., & Jacobs, G. A. (1983). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.2.International Atomic Energy Agency, Assessing Behavioural Competencies of Employees in Nuclear Facilities, IAEA-TECDOC-1917, IAEA, Vienna (2020).