The operating characteristics of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies
Depression Scale were compared between Japanese and U.S. adult workers
. Data were analyzed from age- and education-matched male white collar
workers (n = 368 for each) selected from 2016 workers in Japan and 30
59 in the United States. The U.S. data were obtained from the 1974-75
Augmentation Survey of the National Health and Examination Survey I. T
he Japanese responses to positively worded items markedly differed fro
m those of U.S. workers, whereas responses to negatively worded items
were generally comparable in the two groups. Thus, spuriously higher p
ositive subscale and whole scale scores were found among the Japanese
workers compared with U.S. workers (mean scores: 6.03 vs. 1.83 for the
positive subscale and 9.94 vs. 5.35 for the whole scale, respectively
; both differences were statistically significant). Negative subscale
scores did not differ significantly in the two samples (3.91 vs. 3.52)
. The present study confirmed the hypothesis of Iwata et al. that Japa
nese respondents have a tendency to suppress the expression of positiv
e affect.