Definition
The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) is a self-report measure of depressive symptomatology in the general population (Radloff, 1977).
Description
General Overview
Originally published in 1977 after several years of validation on community and inpatient samples, the 20-item CES-D is one of the five most widely used measures of depression, used in 4.37 % of basic science studies and 1.36 % of treatment outcome studies when a measure of depression was used (Santor, Gregus, & Welch, 2006). The CES-D is unique from other measures of depressive symptomatology in that it was designed for use in the epidemiological study of depressive symptomatology in the general population, rather than as a tool for diagnosing depression or evaluating the severity of depression across treatment (Radloff, 1977). Radloff emphasizes that this scale is not to be used as a diagnostic tool and that interpretations of individual scores should not be made. Rather, the scale...
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References
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Shaffer, K. (2014). Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_300
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_300
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