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Colombia Médica
On-line version ISSN 1657-9534
Abstract
DIAZ, Luis Alfonso; CAMPO, Adalberto; RUEDA, German Eduardo and BARROS, Jaider Alfonso. Proposing a short version of Zungs self-rating depression scale. Colomb. Med. [online]. 2005, vol.36, n.3, pp.168-172. ISSN 1657-9534.
BACKGROUND: Criteria for the major depressive disorder have changed since introduction of Zungs self-rating depression scale (SDS); however, it is still used as a screening tool. OBJECTIVE: To validate the SDS 20 item-version, and to design a short version of SDS. METHOD: One-hundred thirty-eight university students filled out the scale, they were 17 to 33 year-old (mean 22.8 year, SD 3.3), 79.7% were female. They were interviewed by a psychiatrist in order to identify a current major depressive episode (MDE) using SCID-I criteria. We estimated Cronbach s alpha, criterion validity, factorial analysis, and ROC curve to define the best cut-off point for original SDS and new versions. RESULTS: Twenty-six (18.8%) students met criteria for MDE according to SCID-I. We found that ten items of the original SDS screened as accurate as the original SDS did. The original SDS had Cronbach s alpha of 0.875, sensitivity of 0.96, specificity of 0.71, Cohens kappa of 0.441 and ROC curve area of 0.86 for a cut-point of fifty-three. Two salient factors explained near 38% of the variance. Ten-item version had Cronbachs alpha of 0.845, sensitivity of 0.92, specificity of 0.71, Cohens kappa of 0.383 and ROC curve area of 0.84 for a cut-off point of twenty-two. One salient factor accounted for 40% of the variance approximately. CONCLUSIONS: Ten-item SDS is a valid scale to screen major depressive episode among university students.
Keywords : Zung self-rating depression scale; Validation; Students; University.