The Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale: Screening for Depression Among the Hong Kong Chinese Elderly

Abstract

Two studies were conducted respectively to examine the reliability and validity of the standard Zung Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), and a 10-item shorter version of the same test. In particular, the scale's usefulness as a screening instrument for depression among the Hong Kong Chinese elderly was investigated. In addition to the SDS, the Geriatric Depression Scale and the Chinese Hamilton Depression Scale were used to assess the convergent validity of the SDS. Data were collected from 113 nondepressed community-dwelling and 80 depressed elderly subjects. The findings showed that both the original and the shorter version of the SDS were highly reliable and valid. Both versions were appropriate for use as screening instruments for geriatric depression in Hong Kong. When compared with the original scale, the shorter version appeared to be slightly superior in its sensitivity and specificity in discriminating between the depressed and nondepressed subjects.

Factors Related to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Readmission in Taiwan

“…Internal consistency reliability in past research was a .92 coefficient alpha (Zung, 1986). In a Chinese and a Taiwanese population, reliability, Cronbach's alpha of the SDS, was consistently greater than .80 (Lee et al, 1994;Leung, Lue, Lee, & Tang, 1998). Lee et al (1994) reported convergent validity with the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; r = .88) and the Chinese Hamilton Depression Scale (CHDS; r = .86).…”

Development and validation of the Acculturative Stress Scale for Chinese College Students in the United States (ASSCS).

“…Many researchers have translated it into Chinese (see Appendix E) and validated it among Chinese samples (e.g. Lee et al, 1994;Liu, Ma, Kurita, & Tang, 1998). Previous studies also indicated that students with higher levels of acculturative stress would have lower levels of life satisfaction (Pan et al, 2008;Pan et al, 2010).…”

Anxiety disorder and accompanying subjective memory loss in the elderly as a predictor of future cognitive decline

“…For the purpose of this study, participants were selected if they met the following inclusion criteria at the initial consultation: (1) 60 years or older; (2) absence of cognitive impairment, as defined by a score of less than 24/30 on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) (Folstein et al, 1975); (3) absence of depression, as defined by a score of 70 or more on Tucker's short interviewer-assisted depression scale (short Zung) (Tucker et al, 1987), which has been validated for the elderly (Tucker et al, 1987;Lee et al, 1994;Sinoff et al, 2002).…”