Objectives: This study aimed to present the Polish adaptation and preliminary normalization of the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale - 42 (DASS-42).
Methods: The study was conducted among 1,021 participants (625 females and 396 males) aged 18-83 years (M = 30.67; SD = 13.25). It was a non-clinical sample. Second sample was a group of 49 psychiatric patients (28 females and 21 males) aged 22-76 years (M = 49.40; SD = 13.34). The reliability of the DASS-42 was measured using Cronbach's α coefficients and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).
Results: In the non-clinical sample the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.93 points for the depression subscale; 0.89 points for the anxiety subscale; 0.92 for the stress subscale, and 0.96 for the DASS-42 total score. The ICC were satisfactory, between 0.37 and 0.49 points. Psychiatric patients obtained significantly higher results in all subscales and in a total score of the DASS-42 (p< 0.001) than healthy participants. It is an indicator of good concurrent validity of the method. The effect size of the differences for all questionnaire indicators was large (0.96 <d< 1.44). The results for the healthy men and women differed, while the age did not differentiate the respondents. The sten scale was developed taking into account the gender of the respondents.
Conclusions: The obtained results confirmed the satisfactory psychometric properties of the Polish version of the DASS-42. This inventory may be useful for screening in non-clinical groups and groups of psychiatric patients.
Keywords: DASS; depression; normalization.