The development and validation of the COVID-19 Depression Scale (COVID-19DS): association with the Perceived Health-Related Components Scale

ABSTRACT

The aims of the study were: (a) to develop, assess the psychometric properties and explore the factorial structure of the COVID-19 Depression Scale (COVID-19DS), (b) to explore correlations of the COVID-19DS scores with the Perceived Health-related Components Scale (PHCS) scores, and (c) to examine gender differences. A total sample of 313 Turkish students was selected. Cronbach's α was .92. Two factors were extracted and labeled Affective, Cognitive, and Somatic/Vegetative and COVID-19 Depression. The COVID-19DS score was negatively correlated with the PHCS score. Females scored higher than males on the COVID-19DS, and lower than males on the PHCS. Perceived health-related components were most frequently rated as much worse or worse for current status compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak. The COVID-19DS is recommended for use in assessing depression due to coronavirus and as a screening tool to identify those with extremely high scores who may be in need of psycho-educational interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 Depression Scale
• COVID-19 depression
• health-related component
• university students
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

We thank all the students for their participation in the study, and the research assistants for helping in the collection of data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval and consort to participate

Permission for the study was obtained from the Social and Human Sciences Research Ethics Committee (November 26, 2020, number 2020-98) by the Ordu University, Ordu, Turkey.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

1 CFI: Comparative Goodness of Fit Index; NFI: Normed Goodness of Fit Index; RFI: Relative Goodness of Fit Index; IFI: Incremental Goodness of Fit Index; TLI: Tucker-Lewis Index; RMSEA: Root Mean Square Error of Approximation; SRMR: Square Root Mean of Residual Values.

Additional information

Funding

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