The Psychometric Properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 in a Sample of Korean University Students

Abstract

In South Korea (hereafter Korea), mental-health problems have become an important national issue. Korea's public health authority has focused heavily on mental health, particularly depression, due to the country's consistently high suicide rate relative to other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations. 5 In fact, Korea has had the highest suicide rate among OECD countries in annual rankings more than 10 times since 2003. 6 Korea's suicide rate of 29.1 per 100,000 people in 2015 was up to five times higher than the rate in other OECD countries. 6 Suicide has been the leading cause of death for Koreans in their twenties and thirties, according to the National Statistical Office of Korea. 7 Presumably, depression plays a prominent role in many of these suicides. In Korea, the diagnosed prevalence rate for depression was 3% in 2016, with slightly greater prevalence among men (3.1%) than among women (2.9%) in the 18-29 age bracket. 8 Entering university can be a highly stressful life transition for many or even most students, bringing with it increased exposure to stressors. During this crucial stage, students commonly experience financial stress, academic demands, fear of

Psychometric Properties of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-Mini in United States University Students

“…The unidimensionality and Cronbach alpha coefficients of the GAD-7 found in this study are congruent with studies conducted in other populations. For example, this study had strikingly analogous findings to those reported for Korean and Portuguese university students (Bartolo et al, 2017;Lee and Kim, 2019). Similar findings also were reported for primary care patients (Jordan et al, 2017;Johnson et al, 2019), psychiatric patients (Dear et al, 2011;Kertz et al, 2013;Konkan et al, 2013;Rutter and Brown, 2017;Johnson et al, 2019), infertility patients (Omani-Samani et al, 2018), the general population in several countries (Konkan et al, 2013;Sousa et al, 2015;Hinz et al, 2017), adolescents (Tiirikainen et al, 2019), individuals receiving care in a traditional medicine department in China (Zeng et al, 2013), and in non-English speakers (Mills et al, 2014;Sousa et al, 2015;Ahmad et al, 2017).…”

“…Similar findings also were reported for primary care patients (Jordan et al, 2017;Johnson et al, 2019), psychiatric patients (Dear et al, 2011;Kertz et al, 2013;Konkan et al, 2013;Rutter and Brown, 2017;Johnson et al, 2019), infertility patients (Omani-Samani et al, 2018), the general population in several countries (Konkan et al, 2013;Sousa et al, 2015;Hinz et al, 2017), adolescents (Tiirikainen et al, 2019), individuals receiving care in a traditional medicine department in China (Zeng et al, 2013), and in non-English speakers (Mills et al, 2014;Sousa et al, 2015;Ahmad et al, 2017). Further, the goodness-of-fit findings parallel those reported for populations with varying characteristics (García-Campayo et al, 2012;Mills et al, 2014;Bartolo et al, 2017;Hinz et al, 2017;Rutter and Brown, 2017;Doi et al, 2018;Lee and Kim, 2019).…”

“…Brief questionnaires can help healthcare providers rapidly screen patients for a wide array of health conditions, including anxiety disorders. These same questionnaires can serve as self-help tools that can be delivered to consumers conveniently, economically, and privately by the Internet (Donker et al, 2011;Lee and Kim, 2019). Access to health screening tools can provide individualized feedback that may encourage individuals with GAD symptoms to seek treatment from a professional.…”

“…Despite the prevalence of anxiety in young adults and the critical importance of understanding how this measure performs in this population, the only psychometric studies of the GAD questionnaires that could be located for this age group were for university students in Korea (Lee and Kim, 2019) and Portugal (Bartolo et al, 2017). Both of these studies found a single factor model of the GAD-7 to be appropriate for use in college student samples.…”

Prevalence of depression symptoms among Tibetan Buddhist monastic science scholars in India

“…Although the Tibetan PHQ-9 used here demonstrates acceptable reliability, it appears to have a lower alpha than has been found in other studies, many of which have yielded alpha levels above 0.80 (e.g. (20,22,25,(30)(31)(32)). The lower reliability may re ect something about the current translation, or it may re ect true differences in the way that symptoms are interpreted, experienced, or reported by this unique study population.…”