Autism-Open Access
Open Access
ISSN: 2165-7890
ISSN: 2165-7890
Douglas Zvomuya
American Psychiatric Association,Zimbabwe
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Autism Open Access
The purpose of this study was to investigate the factorial validity of the 4DSQ in a Zimbabwean working population. The 4DSQ is a recently developed measure of distress, depression, anxiety and somatisation developed by Terluin (1996). An online survey was administered through SurveyMonkey® to employees on the database of a local consulting firm. A convenient sample (N=819) provided the data set for this analysis. The Cronbach’s α for the 4DSQ ranged from 0.89 to 0.96 based on the whole sample. The sample was randomly split into two samples; test sample (N=410) and holdout sample (409). The data on the test sample was subjected to exploratory factor analysis yielding 4 factors. When subjected to confirmatory factor analysis 3 factors fitted the data better than the 4 factor model. The three factors in the new scale are depression, anxiety and somatisation excluding the distress factor. The 3 factor scale was then validated on holdout sample and it was replicated. The Cronbach’s α for the 3 factor scale ranged from 0.78 to 0.96. Results are discussed in relation to the Zimbabwean context.
Douglas Zvomuya is an Occupational Psychologist issuing authority Allied Health Professions Council Zimbabwe, Birkbeck. He did his education form University of London, UK.
E-mail: douglas.zvomuya@yahoo.com douglas.zvomuya@outlook.com