• Augustine Osman, Jane L Wong, Courtney L Bagge, Stacey Freedenthal, Peter M Gutierrez, and Gregorio Lozano.
• The University of Texas at San Antonio, Department of Psychology, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, Texas 78249-0652, USA. augustine.osman@utsa.edu
• J Clin Psychol. 2012 Dec 1; 68 (12): 1322-38.

ObjectivesWe conducted two studies to examine the dimensions, internal consistency reliability estimates, and potential correlates of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995).MethodParticipants in Study 1 included 887 undergraduate students (363 men and 524 women, aged 18 to 35 years; mean [M] age = 19.46, standard deviation [SD] = 2.17) recruited from two public universities to assess the specificity of the individual DASS-21 items and to evaluate estimates of internal consistency reliability. Participants in a follow-up study (Study 2) included 410 students (168 men and 242 women, aged 18 to 47 years; M age = 19.65, SD = 2.88) recruited from the same universities to further assess factorial validity and to evaluate potential correlates of the original DASS-21 total and scale scores.ResultsItem bifactor and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a general factor accounted for the greatest proportion of common variance in the DASS-21 item scores (Study 1). In Study 2, the fit statistics showed good fit for the bifactor model. In addition, the DASS-21 total scale score correlated more highly with scores on a measure of mixed depression and anxiety than with scores on the proposed specific scales of depression or anxiety. Coefficient omega estimates for the DASS-21 scale scores were good.ConclusionsFurther investigations of the bifactor structure and psychometric properties of the DASS-21, specifically its incremental and discriminant validity, using known clinical groups are needed.© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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