Taking the pulse of the nation: Validating a single-item measure of mental distress

Ferdi Botha, Peter Butterworth () and Roger Wilkins ()
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Peter Butterworth: Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research,The University of Melbourne, https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/766494-peter-butterworth

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Abstract: There are occasions when a very short assessment of mental health or distress is needed. The weekly assessment of distress in Australia during the COVID-19 crisis using the nationally representative Taking the Pulse of the Nation (TTPN) Survey is one example. This paper assesses the psychometric properties of a single-item measure of mental distress against the widely used six-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6). The analysis, based on wave 13 of the TTPN survey, considers data from 1,158 respondents selected from across Australia. The new single-item measure was highly correlated with the K6 (rho = 0.82), the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.93, and at the optimal cut-point the sensitivity was 0.71, the specificity was 0.93, and the proportion of respondents correctly classified by the single-item measure was 0.90. The measure of mental distress developed for the TTPN survey provides a valid measure of population mental distress for circumstances where only a single item can be used.

Keywords: psychological distress; COVID-19; mental health; measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 4pp
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2021n06

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