Brief Description
The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) is a cross-cutting assessment that measures emotional distress, specifically depression, anxiety and stress. 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 nonspecific arousal and assesses difficulty relaxing, nervous arousal, and being easily upset / agitated, irritable / over-reactive and impatient. This abbreviated measure was adapted from the 42-item DASS and has strong reliability and validity. Respondents are asked to rate the degree to which each statement (e.g., “I found it hard to wind down”) applied to them during the past week on a scale from “Did not apply to me at all” to “Applied to me very much, or most of the time”.
Assessment Administration Type
Self-report
Number of questions
21
Age Range for Administration
17+
Recommended Frequency of Administration
Weekly/after each session.
Summary of Scoring and Interpretations
The DASS-21 contains 21 questions scored on a 4-point Likert scale with values from 0 (“Did not apply to me at all”) to 3 (“Applied to me very much, or most of the time”). A total score is calculated by summing all item response scores; higher scores are associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress. In addition, subscale scores can be calculated for each of the three subscales by summing their corresponding items. See table below.
Subscale | Corresponding Question |
Depression | 3, 5, 10, 13, 16, 17, 21 |
Anxiety | 2, 4, 7, 9, 15, 19, 20 |
Stress | 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18 |
The subscale scores can be interpreted as follows after multiplying the scores on the DASS-21 by 2:
| Depression | Anxiety | Stress |
Normal | 0-9 | 0-7 | 0-14 |
Mild | 10-13 | 8-9 | 15-18 |
Moderate | 14-20 | 10-14 | 19-25 |
Severe | 21-27 | 15-19 | 26-33 |
Extremely Severe | 28+ | 20+ | 34+ |
Blueprint Adjustments
Blueprint item scores have already been x2 such that subscales scores can be interpreted according to the table above (i.e., “0”=0, “1”=2, “2”=4, and “3”=6).
Clinical Considerations
Estimated completion time: 5-8 minutes
There are other versions of the DASS, including the 42-item, 10-item and Youth versions, all of which are also available on Blueprint.
Citation
Relevant Articles + Further Resources
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