Question

Information: The psychometric properties of a 30 item Depressive Symptomatology Inventory was computed using 500 adults. Factor analysis revealed three dimensions (cognitive/mood, anxiety/arousal and vegetative). The first 10 items had high factor loadings for cognitive/mood , the second 10 items had high factor loadings for the anxiety/arousal and the final 10 items had high factor loadings for the vegetative one. Cronbach's α ranged from 0·92 to 0·94 for each.   The results showed a high degree of correlation with the Hamilton Depression Inventory and a low degree of correlation with a bulimia scale.

A.   Explain in your own words what sentences 2-3 mean. (7)

B.   Explain in your own words what sentence 4 means. (6)

C.   Explain in your own words what the final sentence means. (6)

D.   Provide with a rationale if you would use this scale for adults that might have depression.(6)

Answer 1

A.) Factor analysis is a method used to determine what exactly a certain statement/question on an inventory or questionnaire is measuring. It can be seen here that in this 30 item Inventory measures 3 types of subfactors related to Depressive Symptomology: Cognitive/Mood, Anxiety, and Arousal/Vegetative. Out of the 30 items, the first 10 questions or statements were used to measure the Cognitive/Mood, the next 10 were used for Anxiety, and the last 10 to check the arousal levels.

B.) Cronback's Alpha is a formula which is used to measure the internal consistency of the items in one test. It basically checks whether the items are related and belong to the questionnaire. An alpha value of more than 0.9 means that the internal consistency is excellent. Therefore, a range from 0.92 to 0.94 means that there is an excellent internal consistency.

C.) Usually, questionnaires are correlated with other tests measuring similiar constructs to test whether they are measuring similiar things or not. For example, you would want one Depression Inventory to be highly correlated with another Depression Inventory as both of them would be measuring the level of depression in a person. As a result, it is goood that the Inventory is highly correlated with Hamilton Depression Inventory as it also measures depression and not with the bulimia scale because that measures bulimia and not depression.

D.) As this test has been computed on 500 adults, the norms would state that it as an apt inventory for adults. The Cronbachs Alpha range shows that there is excellent internal consistency and it has a high correlation with another depression scale i.e Hamilton Depression Inventory. As a result, Depressive Symptomatology Inventory would be an appropriate scale for adults that might have depression.