FACTOR STRUCTURE AND CUT-OFF SCORES OF THE HOSPITAL ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION SCALE (HADS) IN A CROATIAN SAMPLE OF ADULT PATIENTS SUFFERING FROM ADVANCED CANCER

Background: Patients with cancer should be systematically screened for psychological problems at key points in their pathway. Usage of self-report scales for measuring anxiety and depression (such as Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS)) is a very practical method for detecting anxiety and depression. The aim of this research was to determine latent structure, reliability and cutoff scores of HADS in a Croatian sample of adult patients suffering from advanced metastatic cancer. Subjects and methods: According to inclusion and exclusion criteria, participant were recruited at University Hospital Centre Zagreb (N=46; January 2015) and Clinical Hospital Centre 'Sisters of Mercy' (N=29; April 2015). All participants underwent short structured psychodiagnostic interview, cognitive evaluation (usingMontreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test) and were given HADS. Results: When using PCA separately for the items of each original scale of HADS, only four items for the component Depression satisfactorily saturate principal component and when using PCA for all the items, only seven items from the original scale satisfactorily saturate unique principal component. Maximum Likelihood extraction method showed that only four items from the original scale satisfactorily saturated the theoretical scales. Conclusions: The results show that the best solution to use HADS, in defined Croatian population, is as one-dimensional screening instrument (Cronbach's alpha coefficient of internal consistency=0.774) with cut-off score 11/12.