Early Symptom Measurement of Post-Stroke Depression: Development and validation of a new short version

The aim of this study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of the Early Symptom Measurement of Post-Stroke Depression-Short Form (ESMPSD-SF).

The ESMPSD is a specific measurement tool designed to detect early depressive symptoms in acute stroke patients, but it is too long for use in busy clinical settings.

A psychometric study was conducted.

Five hundred and twenty-one post-stroke patients completed two questionnaires, the demographic and the ESMPSD questionnaire, over a period of 10 months, from July 2016-April 2017. The item reduction process was used to reduce the number of items in the ESMPSD questionnaire and consisted of item analysis, exploratory, and confirmatory factor analysis.

The item reduction process resulted in a 12-item short version questionnaire with evidence of acceptable construct validity and internal reliability. Four factors explaining high total variance were extracted: "low," "guilt," "emotional," and "wakefulness". Estimates of all confirmatory model fit indices met the standard criteria. All standardized factor loading estimates of the 12 items met the standard criteria and the variances explained by the items were acceptable. Moreover, internal reliability estimates of the 12-item questionnaire were acceptable, and the corrected item-total correlation and item-subscale correlation also demonstrated evidence of acceptable reliability of the short form questionnaire.

The ESMPSD-SF demonstrates evidence of acceptable reliability and validity to screen early depressive symptoms in acute stroke patients in busy clinical settings.