ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1563190
Validity, reliability, measurement invariance, and equipercentile linking of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 in the youth population in Singapore
Provisionally accepted
Edimansyah Abdin*
Bernard Tan
Sherilyn Chang
Ellaisha Samari
Brian Tan
Charmaine Tang
Janhavi Ajit Vaingankar
Swapna Kamal Verma
Mythily Subramaniam- Institute of Mental Health, Singapore, Singapore
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The current study aims to examine the structural and convergent validity, reliability, and measurement invariance of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales Short Form (DASS-21) across age and gender groups among the youths in Singapore. Additionally, it aims to provide a simple and reliable method for converting the DASS-21 Depression and DASS-21 Anxiety to the Patient Health Questionnaire 8-item (PHQ-8) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scores using an equipercentile linking method. A total of 2600 respondents were recruited from a National Youth Mental Health Study. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed that the original three-factor model fits our data. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the depression, anxiety, and stress subscales were 0.91, 0.87, and 0.89, respectively. Multiple CFA across age and gender showed that the configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance models strongly support the three-factor model. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between the raw and converted PHQ-8 and GAD-7 scores support that the DASS-21 subscale scores are practically exchangeable with the PHQ-8 and GAD-7. These findings suggest that the DASS-21 is a valid tool for measuring depression, anxiety, and stress among the youths in Singapore.
Keywords: Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, DASS-21, validity, Reliability, equipercentile linking
Received: 19 Jan 2025; Accepted: 20 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Abdin, Tan, Chang, Samari, Tan, Tang, Vaingankar, Verma and Subramaniam. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Edimansyah Abdin, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore, Singapore
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