Adaptation of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) in a sample of breast cancer patients

Abstract

 The objective of this study was to adapt the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) in patients with breast cancer. The participants were 57 patients between 18 and 65 years, with the diagnosis of breast cancer.

The HAD Scale developed by Zigmond and Snaith (1983) was applied, which is a simple and practical test for the diagnosis and evaluation of the signs of severity of the disorder in cancer patients. The results obtained show evidence of a good level of content validity, as well as construct validity, evaluated through the confirmatory factor analysis of its main components, observing that all the items show values greater than .30, conserving the 14 items of the total scale.

Likewise, it presents internal consistency, estimated by the reliability indices. The RITC results found are between .387 and .680, meaning they are higher than .20 in the total scale, keeping all the items.

Institutional use scales are presented under the conversion of direct scores to scores converted by enneatypes