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Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21

DASS-21
psychologyhealth sciencesPublic domain

Permission: Public domain. Free to use, reproduce and adapt without asking permission. Cite the original publication.

A 21-item short form of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, with three 7-item subscales measuring depression, anxiety, and stress over the past week.

Items
21
Response format
4-point severity/frequency scale (0-3)
Version
1.0
Subscales
3

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Depression, anxiety, and stress were measured with the DASS-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), three 7-item subscales with good-to-excellent internal consistency (α = .88 for depression, .82 for anxiety, and .90 for stress in a UK adult sample; Henry & Crawford, 2005).

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Reliability & validation

Source
Henry & Crawford, 2005
Validation population
Community adults (Henry & Crawford, 2005)
Cronbach's α
0.82–0.90

Subscales

DepressionAnxietyStress

Response anchors

Did not apply to me at all · Applied to me to some degree, or some of the time · Applied to me to a considerable degree, or a good part of time · Applied to me very much, or most of the time

Known limitations

The 21-item short form yields less stable subscale scores than the 42-item original; the anxiety and stress subscales correlate, reflecting shared negative affectivity.

Original citation

Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Psychology Foundation.

Questions researchers ask

What does the DASS-21 measure?

A 21-item short form of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, with three 7-item subscales measuring depression, anxiety, and stress over the past week.

How many items does the DASS-21 have?

The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21) has 21 items across 3 subscales: Depression, Anxiety, Stress.

Is the DASS-21 free to use?

The DASS-21 is in the public domain: free to use, reproduce and adapt without seeking permission. Cite the original source.

Is the DASS-21 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.82–0.90 (Henry & Crawford, 2005). See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the DASS-21, and how do I cite it?

Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Psychology Foundation.

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Related scales

HADSHospital Anxiety and Depression ScaleBAIBeck Anxiety InventoryBDI-IIBeck Depression Inventory-IICES-DCenter for Epidemiologic Studies Depression ScaleEPDSEdinburgh Postnatal Depression ScaleGAD-7Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7

Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.