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Correspondence concerning this manuscript should be addressed to Andrew J. Marshall, Department of Psychological Sciences, Mail Stop 2051, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2051, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
The high rates of comorbidity among emotional disorders (i.e. mood and anxiety disorders) has led to a greater emphasis on examining factors that may be common to both domains. Transdiagnostic factors are shared between multiple forms of psychopathology, contributing to specific disorders as well as comorbidity between disorders. Increased empirical understanding of transdiagnostic factors is both theoretically and clinically important as new therapeutic interventions are developed to address comorbidity and these common variables (Drost et al., 2014). Although worry has typically been associated with anxiety, recent theories suggest that it may be related to emotional disorders in general (Drost et al., 2014) and may have relatively equal associations with anxiety, depression and stress (Olatunji et al., 2010). Psychometrically addressing this issue involves simultaneously estimating the relations of Worry to both general emotional distress (GED) and specific distress factors that are partialled on the GED. Whereas the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) has been traditionally analysed using a three-factor structure for specific distress, the DASS bifactor model (Gomez, 2013) permits such an evaluation.
The present study sought to replicate the bifactor model of the DASS within a US adult sample utilizing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Second, the study evaluated the bifactor scale reliabilities to determine the portion of reliable variance accounted for by the general and domain-specific factors. Finally, using structural equation modelling (SEM) the present study examined the differential relations of these DASS factors to Worry.
Method
Participants
Participants were 456 English speaking US adults (mean age 35.9 years, SDage = 12.7) of 18 years of age or older. The sample consisted of 279 females (61.2%), 177 males (38.8%), with 79.2% identifying as Caucasian, 6.4% African-American, 5.9% Hispanic, 5.0% Asian, and 3.5% other. In addition, 37.3% of participants reported being diagnosed with or treated for anxiety, worry, or panic.
Procedure
Ethical approval for procedures was obtained from the Texas Tech University (TTU) Human Research Protection Program (HRPP; no. 505082). The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work complied with ethical standards of the TTU HRPP and the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, and its most...