The published norms for the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) give results for clinical populations that largely fall in the severe to very severe categories. As a result, within this population, the ability to compare the comparative contributions of the underlying emotional components is reduced. The present study presents results from a large general psychiatric outpatient population and provides percentile norms with confidence intervals for both the original DASS and the shorter 21-item form. It is noted that both forms have high validity but that the correlations between scales are higher than those reported in non-clinical populations. There was little variation between sexes but some variation of results with age with both younger and older cohorts having lower scores except for the Stress scale where there were higher scores in the older group. There is some evidence of a ceiling effect in the Depression and Stress scales. It was noted that nearly a quarter of patient scores fell within the originally defined normal range suggesting that the DASS would not be a particularly sensitive instrument in its previously reported use as a screening instrument for psychiatric illness.
The Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale (PIRS) was introduced as part of the Workcover legislation in NSW and has since been adopted in other States. There has been significant criticism of its validity and structure, but no supporting research. This study was undertaken to examine the validity of the use of the PIRS to assess psychiatric impairment. This study assesses the concurrent validity of the PIRS by comparing it with the Comcare and Social Security scales and the Health of the Nation Outcome Scale, together with two self‐report measures. It also examines the relationship between the PIRS subscales. A high level of ordinal concordance was demonstrated between all scales although the ratings obtained had major systematic variations between scales in both level and distribution. The scoring technique in the PIRS transforms normally distributed scores to a skewed distribution with a preponderance of low scores. The PIRS is a valid scale for ordering the severity of psychological disability but it measures disability rather than impairment. The form of scoring does not provide a proportionate or statistically meaningful measure.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.