Depression

Twenty-two statements describe a tendency toward depressed mood: often feeling blue, feeling that life is a burden, disliking oneself, having little to look forward to, finding it hard to enjoy things and feeling worn out. The statements are framed as general descriptions of oneself, so the scale describes a disposition rather than a recent episode.

Radloff (1977) developed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) to measure depressive symptoms in the general population. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and were keyed to parallel that measure, so that depressive tendencies can be described within a personality framework.

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe a stronger and more persistent tendency toward low mood, pessimism and low energy; lower scores describe a more buoyant disposition. A high score is a reason for a fuller conversation with a qualified clinician; it is not a diagnosis.

The scale is used in personality research and for self-reflection. On this site, the PHQ-9 measures recent depressive symptoms against diagnostic criteria, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) describes typical emotion, and the Optimism scale describes the opposite outlook.

Items assess depressed affect, somatic symptoms, positive affect (reversed), and interpersonal problems consistent with the CES-D construct, which has strong convergent validity with clinical depression ratings and biological markers (Radloff, 1977).

“Was bothered by things that usually don't bother me.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.