A Study on the Standardization of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale for Koreans: A Comparison of Normal, Depressed and Anxious Groups

Oh, Se Man; Min, Kyung Jun; Park, Doo Byung

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The Purpose of this study was to standardize the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale for Koreans(HAD-K). METHOD: HAD-K, Beck Depression Inventory(BDI), and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale(SAS) were administered to 66 anxious and 74 depressed patients and 189 normal controls.
RESULTS
The median correlation between items of the HAD-A and corrected item total score was 0.55 and HAD-D was 0.47. The values of Cronbach's alpha coefficient were 0.89 and 0.86. The results of testing the validity of the HAD examined by t-test proved that anxious and depressed groups were significantly different from normal controls. The construct validity of HAD-D with BDI was r=0.80, and HAD-A with SAS was r=0.79. The result of examining the sensitivity and specificity of HAD-D revealed that cut-off point of 8 yielded 89.2% sensitivity rate and 82.5% specificity rate. And those of HAD-A revealed that cut-off point of 8 yielded 78.8% sensitivity rate and 82.5% specificity rate. The result of the factor analysis found 3 factors in HAD, which were anxiety(factor 1) and depression (factor 2). The total percent of two factors were 59.6%.
CONCLUSION
The HAD-K was proven to measure the anxiety and depression validly. Primary physicians and non-psychiatrists also can easily measure anxiety and depression of patients within a short time with HAD-K.