Confrmatory Factor Analysis of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale in a sample of Salvadorean university students

Abstract

Depression, anxiety and stress are amongst the most frequent psychological problems found in university students. Given this, it is relevant to have an instrument that can measure these three disorders. The goal of this research is to prove the psychosometric properties of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) through the Confrmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in a sample of Salvadorean university students. This is an instrumental study with a transversal design. A non-intentional non-probabilistic sampling was used; 1.014 Salvadorean university students were evaluated. The sample consists of 606 (59,8%) women and 408 (40,2%) men; the median age was 26.10 years old, with a standard deviation of 6.91. A digital survey was conducted via Google Forms in order to collect data. The fndings showed that the DASS-21 has the adequate psychosometric properties of confrmatory validity and reliability in order to assess depression, anxiety and stress in Salvadorean university students.