TY  - JOUR
A1  - Conceição, Virgı́nia da
A1  - Rothes, Inês
A1  - Severo, Milton
A1  - Griffiths, Kathleen
A1  - Hegerl, Ulrich
A1  - Gusmão, Ricardo
T1  - Psychometric properties of the Depression Stigma Scale in the Portuguese population and its association with gender and depressive symptomatology
T2  - Health and quality of life outcomes
N2  - Background: Stigma is one of the most significant constraints on people living with depression. There is a lack of validated scales in Portugal to measure depression stigma; therefore, the Depression Stigma Scale (DSS) is essential to the depression stigma research in Portugal.
Methods: We developed the adaptation process with the ITC Guidelines for Translation and Adapting Tests taken into consideration. We collected the sample as part of the OSPI program—Optimizing suicide prevention programs and their implementation in Europe, specifically within the application in Portugal, and included 1693 participants. Floor-ceiling effects and response ranges were analyzed, and we calculated Cronbach alphas, and Confirmatory Analysis. Validity evidence was tested with two well-documented hypotheses, using data on gender and depression symptoms.
Results: The sample was well comparable with the general Portuguese population, indicating its representativeness. We identified a three-factor structure in each subscale (personal and perceived stigma): weak-not-sick, discrimination, and dangerous/unpredictable, with good model fit results. The Cronbach's alphas were satisfactory, and validity was confirmed.
Conclusions: This study established the validity and demonstrated good psychometric properties of the DSS in the Portuguese population. The validation of the DSS can be beneficial in exploring stigma predictors and evaluating the effectiveness of stigma reduction interventions.
KW  - Personal stigma
KW  - Perceived stigma
KW  - Stigma scale
KW  - Depression stigma
KW  - Portuguese population
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/73615
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-736151
SN  - 1477-7525
N1  - The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco
mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
N1  - The European Community's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) provided funding for this study under grant agreement no. 223138. The funding agency had no role in the study's design, data collection, the analyses and interpretation of the data, the writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
VL  - 20
IS  - art. 42
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -