Dimensionality and scale properties of the Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: the DiaDDzoB study

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Giesje Nefs¹  François Pouwer¹  Victor JM Pop¹  Evi SA de Cock²  Wilco HM Emons³ 

[1] Department of Medical Psychology & Neuropsychology, Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases (CoRPS), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;Department of Medical Psychology & Neuropsychology, Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases (CoRPS), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;Department of Developmental and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;Department of Medical Psychology & Neuropsychology, Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases (CoRPS), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;Department of Methodology and Statistics, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;

关键词: Differential Item Functioning;    Local Dependence;    Bifactor Model;    Grade Response Model;    Item Bias;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-11-141

 received in 2010-12-08, accepted in 2011-08-24,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDepression is a common complication in type 2 diabetes (DM2), affecting 10-30% of patients. Since depression is underrecognized and undertreated, it is important that reliable and validated depression screening tools are available for use in patients with DM2. The Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS) is a widely used method for screening depression. However, there is still debate about the dimensionality of the test. Furthermore, the EDS was originally developed to screen for depression in postpartum women. Empirical evidence that the EDS has comparable measurement properties in both males and females suffering from diabetes is lacking however.MethodsIn a large sample (N = 1,656) of diabetes patients, we examined: (1) dimensionality; (2) gender-related item bias; and (3) the screening properties of the EDS using factor analysis and item response theory.ResultsWe found evidence that the ten EDS items constitute a scale that is essentially one dimensional and has adequate measurement properties. Three items showed differential item functioning (DIF), two of them showed substantial DIF. However, at the scale level, DIF had no practical impact. Anhedonia (the inability to be able to laugh or enjoy) and sleeping problems were the most informative indicators for being able to differentiate between the diagnostic groups of mild and severe depression.ConclusionsThe EDS constitutes a sound scale for measuring an attribute of general depression. Persons can be reliably measured using the sum score. Screening rules for mild and severe depression are applicable to both males and females.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© de Cock et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.