Psychometric properties of the Depression Stigma Scale (DSS) in Chinese cancer patients: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

ObjectivesThe Depression Stigma Scale (DSS) is commonly used to assess depression stigma in the general population and in people with depression. The DSS includes two 9-item subscales assumed to measure personal depression stigma (ie, personal perceptions of depression) and perceived depression stigma (ie, perceptions of how others perceive depression). The aim of the present study was to examine its psychometric properties in terms of validity and reliability in Chinese cancer patients.DesignA cross-sectional study design.Participants and settingsThis study focused on 301 Chinese cancer patients recruited from two hospitals in Xi’an, China.MethodsExploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to assess the factor structure. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. To examine concurrent validity, symptoms of depression were used as the criterion.ResultsFor each subscale of the DSS (ie, personal and perceived depression stigma), the EFA and CFA confirmed a two-factor structure: weak-not-sick (ie, perceiving that depression is not a real illness, but rather a sign of weakness) and discrimination (ie, perceiving that depressed people are discriminated against). The Cronbach’s alphas were adequate, ranging from 0.70 to 0.80. Symptoms of depression were positively but weakly correlated to personal and perceived depression stigma.ConclusionsThe DSS appeared to show satisfactory psychometric properties in our sample of cancer patients. Both personal depression stigma and perceived depression stigma subscales consisted of two underlying aspects.

Stigmatizing Beliefs and Attitudes to Depression in Adolescent School Students in Chile and Colombia

“…According to our review of the literature, there are no published studies with adolescent-only samples that have examined the factor structure of the scale using CFA. In adults, a one-factor structure of the DSS-Personal subscale has been reported by a study with a Chinese community sample (Yang et al, 2020), but other studies have failed to reach a onefactor solution and have proposed that the DSS-Personal subscale could be composed of two (Zhu et al, 2019) and three factors (Boerema et al, 2016). A study with a sample comprising adolescents aged 15 and adults up to 25 years of age also yielded a two-factor solution for the DSS-Personal subscale (Yap et al, 2014).…”

Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward Depression Among Male and Female, Medical and Non-medical Major College Students

“…The response of each item was measured on a five-point scale ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" (Griffiths et al, 2004). The Chinese version of the scale has been widely used with good reliability and validity (Zhu et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2020).…”

Psychometric properties of the Depression Stigma Scale in the Portuguese population and its association with gender and depressive symptomatology

“…The three factors accounted for 55.29% of the variance: 29.64% was explained by the first factor, 13.21% by the second and 12.44% by the third factor. The naming of the first and last factors was after Zhu and colleagues designation (Zhu et al, 2019): weak-not-seek in the first factor (items 1, 2, 3) and discrimination in the third factor (items 7, 8, 9). The second factor was labelled Dangerous/ unpredictable , following Boerema and colleagues designation (Boerema et al, 2016), corresponding to items 4, 5, 6.…”