Dysfunctional Attitude Scale: Evidence of Disconformity Factor Structure

The dysfunctional attitude scale (das) was designed to measure patterns of maladaptive thinking held by depressed individuals. despite its wide use as a research and clinical tool, only a few studies have been carried out to examine its psychometric properties in a high school student population in iran. the objective of this study was to validate the iranian version of the dysfunctional attitudes scale form a in the context of iranian students. a total of 522 iranian students (275 females and 225 males) from high schools participated in the study and completed a persian version of general health questionnaire (pghq) and a persian version of automatic thought questionnaire (patq). exploratory factor analyses showed a four-factor model of dysfunctional attitude scale which contains perfectionism, social approval, dependency and autonomy. the fit of the proposed four-factor model was not promising. the internal consistency of the das (40 items) was reasonable (cronbach's ? = 0.72).the das correlated significantly with the pghq (r = 0.28) and the patq (r = 0.35). the results of exploratory factor analyses fairly supported the four-factor framework with iranian students; however, confirmatory factor analysis was not fit with the model. implications are discussed in detail