Validation of the Slovenian version of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale in female cancer patients

Abstract

Introduction: The present study describes the translation process of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) into the Slovenian language and the testing of its reliability and validity on the psychological morbidity in female cancer patients.

Subjects and methods: The English version of the HADS was translated into the Slovene language using the 'forward-backward' procedure. The questionnaire was used in a study of 202 female cancer patients together with a clinical structured interview (CSI) to measure psychological state. A biserial correlation coefficient was calculated.

Results: The value of biserial correlation coefficient was 0.81 for the depression scale and 0.91 for the anxiety scale.

Conclusion: The validation process of the Slovenian HADS score version shows metric properties similar to those in international studies, suggesting that it measures the same constructs, in the same way, as the original HADS score form. This validation study of the Slovenian version of the HADS proved that it is an acceptable and valid measure of psychological distress among female cancer patients.