Comparison of Short Scales to Measure Depressive Symptoms in Elders With Diabetes

Depression is the most common mental health problem among American elders and it is also prevalent among those with diabetes. The 20-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) is com-monly used to measure depressive symptoms in elders, but its length is potentially burdensome. Twelve short forms of the CES-D (4 to 16 items) exist, but they have not been tested with elders with diabetes. This study compared reliability and validity estimates across the 12 short forms and investigated similarities in classifying elders with diabetes as clinically depressed using standardized cut scores. Beck’s theory provides a frame-work for identifying the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and somatic symp-toms that are measured by the CES-D. Data were merged from two studies, which yielded 80 elders with diabetes who completed the CES-D items during structured interviews. Cronbach’s alpha was.87 for the CES-D; it ranged from.60 (5 items) to.84 (16 items) for shorter forms. Correlations of the full CES-D and short forms ranged from.82 (4 items) to.98 (16 items). Using the CES-D cut score, 14 % of the elders with diabetes had clinically significant depressive symptoms: 21 % men, 11 % women, 17% African Americans, and 13 % Caucasians. A 5-item scale overestimate