Validation of Goldberg's Depression Scale in academic and non-academic peoples

Depression is a psychiatric disorder and the most common illness of present century which is known as psychiatric cold. In order to diagnose this disease, various tests have been developed. The purpose of this research is to study reliability, validity and composing norms of Goldberg's depression scale. This research is applied. Goldberg's depression scale was administered to 427 residents of West Azerbaijan who were chosen using stratified random sampling method. In order to calculate the reliability and validity of the scale, Cronbach's Alpha and factorial analysis (Varimax Rotation) were respectively used. Those items which had a correlation coefficient lower than 0. 4 were removed from the final version of the scale and analysis. To carry out the study further, other statistical indices such as independent sample t-test and F were used. Total reliability obtained by Cronbach's Alpha method for those with high school degrees was0.901, for those with higher education degrees was 0.861 and for others was 0.817. The results of factorial analysis indicates that this scale consist of three main factors which explain 44.63% of the total depression variance. With regard to high reliability of the scale, validity, norms and few items and necessary time for its administration (about 5minutes), it could said that Goldberg's depression scale is a suitable instrument to identify and pilot depressed individuals.