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

摘要

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 pro...