Centre for Policy on Ageing



Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) scale — factor structure, item analyses and internal consistency in a large population
Author(s)	Arnstein Mykletun, Eystein Stordal, Alv A Dahl
Journal title	British Journal of Psychiatry, vol 179, December 2001
Pages	pp 540-544
Keywords	Anxiety ; Depression ; Screening ; Evaluation ; Norway.
Annotation	The Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) rating scale is a commonly used questionnaire, for which previous studies have given inconsistent results regarding its psychometric properties. All inhabitants aged 20 to 89 were invited to take part in the Nord-Trondelag Health Study, Norway; only the 51,530 completing the HAD scale questionnaires formed the basis for the psychometric examinations. Principal component analysis extracted two factors in the HAD scale that accounted for 57% of variance: the anxiety and depression subscales shared 30% of the variance. Both subscales were found to be internally consistent with Crohnbach's coefficient, being 0.8 and 0.76 respectively. The HAD Scale's basic psychometric properties as a self-rating instrument should be considered as quite good in terms of factor structure, intercorrelation, homogeneity and internal consistency. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-011205208 A
Classmark	ENP: ENR: 3V: 4C: 76N
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.