Psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21)

The study examined the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the DASS-21. Thirty patients with major depression and 30 patients with anxiety disorders and 250 health controls participated in the study. We tested six alternative models using CFA. We found that tripartite model comprised of anhedonia and physiological hyperarousal along with a general negative affectivity outperformed alternative models. The DASS-21 distinguished clinical groups from healthy controls. The scale had excellent internal reliability, with Cronbach's alphas ranging from 0.87 to 0.90, and temporal stability, with intra-correlations ranging from 0.82 to 0.93. The Turkish version of the DASS-21 appears to have adequate psychometric properties in clinical and non-clinical samples.