Robustness and Findings of a Web-Based System for Depression Assessment in a University Work Context

Sabina Asensio-Cuesta, Adrián Bresó, Carlos Saez and Juan M. García-Gómez
Additional contact information
Sabina Asensio-Cuesta: Instituto de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicaciones (ITACA), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Adrián Bresó: Instituto de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicaciones (ITACA), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Carlos Saez: Instituto de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicaciones (ITACA), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Juan M. García-Gómez: Instituto de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicaciones (ITACA), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: Depression is associated with absenteeism and presentism, problems in workplace relationships and loss of productivity and quality. The present work describes the validation of a web-based system for the assessment of depression in the university work context. The basis of the system is the Spanish version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). A total of 185 participants completed the BDI-II web-based assessment, including 88 males and 97 females, 70 faculty members and 115 staff members. A high level of internal consistency reliability was confirmed. Based on the results of our web-based BDI-II, no significant differences were found in depression severity between gender, age or workers’ groups. The main depression risk factors reported were: “Changes in sleep”, “Loss of energy”, “Tiredness or fatigue” and “Loss of interest”. However significant differences were found by gender in “Changes in appetite”, “Difficulty of concentration” and “Loss of interest in sex”; males expressed less loss of interest in sex than females with a statistically significant difference. Our results indicate that the data collected is coherent with previous BDI-II studies. We conclude that the web-based system based on the BDI-II is psychometrically robust and can be used to assess depression in the university working community.

Keywords: depression; web-based; assessment; Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II); university; workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/4/644/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/4/644/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:4:p:644-:d:208073

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().