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Comparative performance of long and short forms of the Geriatric Depression Scale in mildly demented Chinese
- Authors:
- CHENG Sheung-Tak, CHAN Alfred C.M.
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 20(12), December 2005, pp.1131-1137.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
This study aims to investigate if a brief version (four items) of the Geriatric Depression Scale works equally well with mildly demented as with nondemented patients in young-old and old-old persons, and to compare its diagnostic performances with those of the 15- and the 30-item version of the scale. Four hundred and forty-two older persons were given a GDS interview and received an independent psychiatric evaluation. Receiver operating characteristic curves were separately plotted for the young-old demented, old-old demented, young-old nondemented, and old-old nondemented. The four-item version yielded comparable performance to the 15- and the 30-item version of the GDS, regardless of age and dementia status. It is reasonably robust to the effects of age and mild dementia, whether alone or in combination. Nonetheless, among the old-old demented, only a third of those tested positive were actually positive, but this problem was not specific to the four-item version.
The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale in older Chinese: thresholds for long and short forms
- Authors:
- CHENG Sheung-Tak, CHAN Alfred C. M.
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 20(5), May 2005, pp.465-470.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
No study has examined the diagnostic validity of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) in the Chinese elderly. This study aims to determine appropriate cutoffs for the 20- (CESD-20) as well as a ten-item (CESD-10) version of the instrument. Data were also provided, based on simulated scoring, for the diagnostic performance of the scales when using dichotomous instead of 4-point rating scales. Three hundred and ninety eight persons aged 60 +referred for psychiatric asssessment by a physician were administered the CES-D as well as given an independent psychiatric assessment. A spectrum of depression diagnosis as the criterion was used to assess the diagnostic validity of the CES-D. The ten and the 20-item version of the CES-D, regardless of scoring method, produced essentially identical performance indices. The optimal thresholds were 12 and 22 for CESD-10 and CESD-20 respectively, and based on these thresholds, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 0.76, 0.55, 0.57 and 0.74 for CESD-10, and 0.75, 0.51, 0.55 and 0.72 for CESD-20. With both ends of the rating scale collapsed to create dichotomous items, the optimal thresholds became 4 for CESD-10 and 7 for CESD-20, and the correponding performance indices were 0.67, 0.58, 0.56 and 0.69 for CESD-10, and 0.70, 0.58, 0.57 and 0.70 for CESD-20. The ten-item version can be used in lieu of the 20-item version, and a dichotomous response format would probably work as well as the original four-point format, in order to simplify administration for elderly persons