Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale - DASS- Long

Technical Manual

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: January 15, 2013

Last Modified: January 25, 2023 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements the original version of the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) with 42 items as published on: https://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/groups/dass/

This script uses the American version published.

Duration

5 minutes

Overview

From the website: https://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/groups/dass/

"General description of the scales

The DASS is a set of three self-report scales designed to measure the negative emotional states of
depression, anxiety and stress. The DASS was constructed not merely as another set of scales to measure conventionally
defined emotional states, but to further the process of defining, understanding, and measuring the
ubiquitous and clinically significant emotional states usually described as depression, anxiety and stress.
The DASS should thus meet the requirements of both researchers and scientist-professional clinicians.

Each of the three DASS scales contains 14 items, divided into subscales of 2-5 items with similar content.
The Depression scale assesses dysphoria, hopelessness, devaluation of life, self-deprecation,
lack of interest/involvement, anhedonia, and inertia.
The Anxiety scale assesses autonomic arousal, skeletal muscle effects, situational anxiety,
and subjective experience of anxious affect.
The Stress scale is sensitive to levels of chronic non-specific arousal. It assesses difficulty relaxing,
nervous arousal, and being easily upset/agitated, irritable/over-reactive and impatient.

Subjects are asked to use 4-point severity/frequency scales to rate the extent to which they have
experienced each state over the past week. Scores for Depression, Anxiety and Stress are calculated
by summing the scores for the relevant items [...]"


42 4-point Likert scale to assess Anxiety, Depression and Stress over the past week.

Summary Data

File Name: dass42_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
totalScore Calculates the total score (double the sum of all scores for the short version)
depression Subscale scores (double the sum of all scores for a particular subscale for the short version)
anxiety Subscale scores (double the sum of all scores for a particular subscale for the short version)
stress Subscale scores (double the sum of all scores for a particular subscale for the short version)

Raw Data

File Name: dass42.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject, group, session With the current subject/groupnumber/session id
build Inquisit version number
q*_response Response given (in assigned values: 0-3)
0 = did not apply
3 = applied to me to a considerable degree
(no reversed scored items)
q*_latency How much time in ms the participant spent on the surveyPage with this particular question (the last time this particular surveyPage was visited)