Performance of the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale for caregiving research

Abstract

Objectives:The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CESD) scale has been useful in a broad spectrum of health research on patient and population outcomes. A brief version is used when depressive symptoms are not the primary focus. Rasch (item response) analysis previously demonstrated potential problems with positively worded items. We tested the 10-item CESD (CESD-10) scale and considered an 8-item version with both psychometric and Rasch analyses.Methods:This was a special sample of 2067 caregivers from three existing US databases. We describe item response patterns and internal constancy in addition to Rasch scale results.Results:There were few problems with missing data, and internal consistency was high (alpha = 0.86–0.88) for both CESD versions. Rasch analysis indicated that one of the positive items (“hopeful about future”) could be dropped.Conclusions:We partly confirmed prior work that suggested dropping positive items for the CESD-10. Among caregivers, item-level problems and scaling problems seem minimal. At present, there is not a strong rationale for dropping the CESD-10 positive items: the one poorly performing positive item might be explained by the special caregiver sample.

Prevalence and correlates of benzodiazepine use and misuse among young adults who use prescription opioids non-medically

“…Additional factors explored were age; sex at birth (male vs. female); race (white vs. non-white); Hispanic or Latino descent; ever experiencing homelessness (defined as not having a regular place to stay, living in a shelter because of nowhere to go, or living in a place not ordinarily used for sleeping); experiencing homelessness in the last six months; ever being incarcerated; ever overdosing by accident; using NMPOs to feel less depressed or anxious; screening positive for depressive symptomology, using a cut-off of ≥ 10 on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Short Scale (CES-D10) (Andresen et al, 2013); ever being diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Disorder (ADD)/Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, or anxiety disorder, and screening positive for unhealthy alcohol use (a score ≥ 3 for women and ≥ 4 for men), based on the Brief Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT-C) (Bradley et al, 2007). …”

An online daily diary study of alcohol use using Amazon's Mechanical Turk

“…Depression was assessed using the 8-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale [30], which is a validated short version of the 20-item CES-D [31]. Both the 8-item CES-D (α = 0.78) and the 4-item CAGE (α = 0.74) exhibited acceptable scale reliability in our sample.…”

Psychometric properties of the Bangla version of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6)

“…To our knowledge, the current study is the first psychometric evaluation of the translated version of 6-item Kessler and specificity as any increase in sensitivity is accompanied by a decrease in specificity. We used CES-D-10 because it is considered as one of the most common measures of depressive symptoms (Andresen et al, 2013;Radloff, 1977). Participants with a total score of ≥ 10 on CES-D-10 were classified as showing depressive symptoms, and those with scores < 10 were classified as non-depressive (Radloff, 1977).…”