Concurrent Validity of the Depression and Anxiety Components in the Bahasa Malaysia Version of the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS)

Objective:the bahasa malaysia (bm) version of depression anxiety stress scales 21-item (dass-21) has been widely used ever since the establishment of its validity. to consolidate the evidence of the bm dass-21 validity by examining its concurrent validity.methods:the bm dass was administered together with the hospital anxiety and depressive scale (hads) to a total of 246 patients at international islamic university malaysia (iium) infertility centre.results:the anxiety domain of bm dass-21 had good correlation with anxiety domain in hads (0.61) but for dass depressive domain, it had modest correlation with its respective domain in hads (0.49).conclusions:the results of this study further ensconced the evidence that the bm dass-21 had relatively satisfactory psychometric properties for clinical subjects in malaysia