Reevaluating positive affect in the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale

In 2000, Schroevers and colleagues examined the reliability and validity of a two-factor structure for the Dutch version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale in cancer patients and in a community sample. The authors concluded that a two-factor structure assessing Positive Affect (PA) and Depressed Affect was a better fit to the data than the standard four-factor structure. They argued further that the four reverse-scored items composing the PA scale should be dropped. Using similar measures and analyses as Schroevers and colleagues, we examined the factor structure and concurrent validity of the English version of the CES-D in university student and community samples. Across both samples the factor structure was more similar to Radloff's (1977) original four-factor structure than to the proposed two-factor structure. Additionally, our validity analyses indicated no problems with the PA items and suggested that PA might be more specifically related to depression than to other forms of psychopathology. We recommend that clinicians and researchers using the English version of the CES-D continue to use the full 20-item version.