Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales

Abstract

The psychometric properties of the DepressionAnxiety Stress Scales (DASS) were evaluated in anormal sample of N = 717 who were also administeredthe Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the BeckAnxiety Inventory (BAI). The DASS was shown topossess satisfactory psychometric properties, andthe factor structure was substantiated both byexploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Incomparison to the BDI and BAI, the DASS scalesshowed greater separation in factor loadings. TheDASS Anxiety scale correlated 0.81 with the BAI, andthe DASS Depression scale correlated 0.74 with theBDI. Factor analyses suggested that the BDI differsfrom the DASS Depression scale primarily in that theBDI includes items such as weight loss, insomnia,somatic preoccupation and irritability, which failto discriminate between depression and otheraffective states. The factor structure of thecombined BDI and BAI items was virtually identicalto that reported by Beck for a sample of diagnoseddepressed and anxious patients, supporting the viewthat these clinical states are more severeexpressions of the same states that may be discernedin normals. Implications of the results for theconceptualisation of depression, anxiety andtension/stress are considered, and the utility ofthe DASS scales in discriminating between theseconstructs is discussed.