MedEdPORTAL (Jan 2014)
Critical Synthesis Package: International Depression Literacy Survey
Abstract
Abstract This Critical Synthesis Package includes: (1) a Critical Analysis of the psychometric properties and the applications to health sciences for the International Depression Literacy Survey (IDLS), and (2) a copy of the IDLS developed by Ian Hickie, MD. The IDLS is a short, 29-item self-report survey that provides descriptive information on individuals' personal knowledge (i.e., base rates, symptoms, and treatment) attitudes towards, and personal experience with depression. It is a modular survey with respondents only proceeding to subsequent sections depending on responses. There are seven sections: (1) demographics, (2) knowledge of major health problems and depression, (3) knowledge of help and treatments, (4) experience with seeking information for depression, (5) perceived need for mental health care provided by general practitioners, (6) attitudes to depression and its treatment, and (7) general information (i.e., respondent's personal psychological distress). Response options vary between Likert-type scales, forced-choice options, and nominated selections from provided lists. The scale was developed specifically for the countries and cultures of the Asia-Pacific region. The scale has been used with medical trainees, and results show that students with different levels of training and from different countries score differently on the scale. Further, respondents score differently on the scale before and after depression education training. The IDLS has strengths in its brevity, modular approach to literacy questions, and there is a growing body of research from the measure developers supporting construct validity. However, there is no scoring or interpretation guide, no evidence for concurrent or discriminant validity, and no reported reliability metrics. In sum, evidence is accruing that the IDLS may provide a valid measurement of medical trainees' depression literacy. The instrument may be especially useful when used as a pretraining and posttraining knowledge test with medical trainees.
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