The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales for Youth (DASS-Y): evidence of validity and cross-national and gender measurement invariance.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry
; 2024 Aug 14.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39141105
ABSTRACT
The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales for Youth (DASS-Y) is a recently developed measure of unpleasant emotional experiences for children and adolescents; however, the evidence for its validity is still limited. The present study evaluated the evidence for the structural, convergent, and incremental validity of the DASS-Y on a sample of Serbian adolescents aged 15-19 years (N = 421; 48% female, mean age = 16.86). Measurement invariance across gender and two countries (Serbia and Australia) was also tested. The findings supported the bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (bifactor-ESEM) representation of the DASS-Y, which includes the General factor of negative affect/emotional distress, and three specific factors of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress. The DASS-Y factors showed evidence of incremental validity in predicting global externalizing symptoms and demonstrated convergent validity in relation to measures of global internalizing and externalizing symptoms as well as subjective well-being. The bifactor-ESEM model of the DASS-Y was found to be invariant across gender and two countries. The present study findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between general and specific components of unpleasant emotional states.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry
Journal subject:
PEDIATRIA
/
PSIQUIATRIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Country of publication:
Germany