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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Development and testing of a five-item version of the Geriatric Depression Scale | | Author(s) | M Trinidad Hoyl, Cathy A Alessi, Judith O Harker |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 47, no 7, July 1999 |
| Pages | pp 873-878 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Screening ; Evaluation ; Testing. |
| Annotation | A 5-item version of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was created from the 15-item GDS by selecting items with the highest Pearson chi squared correlation with clinical diagnosis of depression. Sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic accuracy, and positive and negative predictive values were calculated for the 15-item GDS and the new 5-item scale. Subjects were 74 frail out-patients (98.6% male, mean age 74.6). Clinical evaluation found that 46% were depressed. The depressed and not depressed groups were similar with regard to demographics, mental status, educational level, and number of chronic medical conditions. The 5-item GDS (compared with the 15-item GDS results shown in parenthesis) had a sensitivity of .97 (.94), specificity of .85 (.84), positive predictive value of .85 (.82), negative predictive value of .97 (.94) and accuracy of .9 (.88) for predicting depression. Thus, the 5-item GDS was as effective as the 15-item GDS for depression screening in this population, and had a much shorter administration time. If validated elsewhere, it may be preferred as a screening test for depression. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990825321 A |
| Classmark | ENR: 3V: 4C: 3T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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