Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) for Finnish-speaking Adults: Validation and Normative Data

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Abstract

We conducted the first validation of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) in Finnish.DASS-21 is a short public-domain questionnaire, which presents a way to quickly and effectivelyscreen for mental ill-health. We recruited two large samples, one aged 24–45 (N = 3,101 [2,488women]), the other aged 60–82 (N = 5,462 [4,473 women]), all employees of the City of Helsinki atinclusion (2017 and 2000–2002). DASS-21 measured depression, anxiety, stress, and general distressreliably among Finnish-speaking adults. It appeared invariant with age and gender as evinced byinvariance analyses, latent mean comparisons, and an examination of psychometric properties for thesubscales and individual items. The subscales negatively correlated with the Emotional Well-beingsubscale of the RAND-36, as expected. A comparison of five structural models using confirmatoryfactor analyses (CFA) and a robust estimation method (WLSMV) showed good fit for a one-factorsolution. We discuss the use and interpretation of the DASS-21 as both a measure of specific affectivesymptoms and unidimensional General Distress. We provide future researchers and clinicians withnorms and estimates of measurement error among Finnish-speaking adults.

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