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

• Published in: SAGE open medicine Vol. 1; p. 2050312113514576
• Main Authors: Andresen, Elena M, Byers, Katherine, Friary, John, Kosloski, Karl, Montgomery, Rhonda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.01.2013; SAGE Publishing
• Subjects: Original; questionnaires/standards; Psychometrics; depression; caregiving
• ISSN: 2050-3121; 2050-3121
• DOI: 10.1177/2050312113514576

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 problems seem minimal. At present, there is not a strong rationale for dropping the CESD-10 positive items: the one poorly performing positive item might be explained by the special caregiver sample.