A Preliminary Validation of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS) in Non-clinical Sample

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a preliminary study of the factor structure, concurrent validity and reliability of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS) amongst an adult sample recruited from the community. The original DASS has 3 subscales, each of which consists of 14 items. All participants completed DASS, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Four Systems Anxiety Questionnaire (FSAQ). The exploratory factor analysis revealed that all the 14 items that make up the stress scale loaded on one factor, while two items on DASS depression subscale had a complex structure loading on the anxiety and stress factors. Furthermore, two items on the anxiety subscale of DASS had a complex structure loading on the depression and stress factors. After deleting these 4 problematic items from DASS, the results of exploratory factor analysisindicated that a three-factor structure best fitted the data. The results also confirmed excellent internal consistency, a good test-retest reliability and acceptable concurrent validity for the three subscales of DASS. These data suggest that the Iranian version of DASS has satisfactory psychometric properties and can be administered to the Iranian adult population.

Keywords

• Depression; anxiety; stress; validity; reliability