Use of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 in young people with temporomandibular disorders: Reliability and dimensionality

ABSTRACT

Objective

The reliability and dimensionality of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) were explored in adolescents/young adults with temporomandibular disorders (TMDs).

Methods

TMD presence was established with the Fonseca Anamnestic Index. Reliability of the DASS-21 for participants with (WT) and without (NT) TMDs was assessed by the Cronbach alpha test, while dimensionality was examined using exploratory factor analysis.

Results

Data from 400 participants (mean age 18.8 ± 1.5 years; 52.2% women) comprising 47.0% with and 53.0% without TMDs were evaluated. Total-DASS and the 3 subscales showed acceptable to high internal consistencies for the WT and NT groups, with alphas of 0.78–0.94 and 0.66–0.92, respectively. Although 3 factors contributed to about half the variance for both groups, scalar and item discrepancies in the primary anxiety-stress factor existed.

Conclusion

The DASS-21 has good reliability but may comprise only 2 dimensions, specifically anxiety-stress and depression, instead of the 3 originally asserted.

KEYWORDS:

• Depression
• anxiety
• stress
• reliability
• dimensionality

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff, especially Dr. Natu VP, and students of the School of Health and Social Sciences, Nanyang Polytechnic for their assistance with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data for this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article