What are the advantages and disadvantages of the short (21-item) version of the DASS?
The full DASS gives somewhat more reliable scores, and more information about specific symptoms, but the DASS 21 has the advantage of taking only half the time to administer. There are several published studies showing that the DASS21 has the same factor structure and gives similar results to the full DASS (see Publications page). In general, the full DASS is often preferable for clinical work, and the DASS21 is often best for research purposes. The items in the DASS21 were selected on the basis of several criteria: – good factor loadings – coverage of all subscales within each scale – item means, such that DASS21 scores for each scale should be very close to exactly half the full scale score Remember when using the DASS21 to multiply the obtained scale scores by 2, so that they can be compared to the DASS normative data and to other published DASS data.
