FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE GERIATRIC DEPRESSION SCALE IN A COHORT OF DEPRESSED NURSING-HOME RESIDENTS

We examined factor structures of the 30-item Geriatric Depression Scal e in a sample of depressed nursing home residents at various levels of cognitive functioning (N = 917; observation-to-variable ratio 30.6:1) . Using principal components analysis and orthogonal varimax rotation, a six-factor structure involving 26 of the 30 items was derived. This solution, which explained 55.1% of the variance, consisted of the fol lowing factors: life dissatisfaction, dysphoria, hopelessness/decrease d self-attitude, rumination/anxiety, social withdrawal/decreased motiv ation and decreased cognition. This factor solution shows that a scree ning test for depression like the GDS may be able to make stable and i ndependent distinctions between various dimensions associated with dep ressed mood in nursing home residents. The factors derived map well on to commonly recognized dimensions of depressed mood in frail older adu lts residing in long-term care facilities. The proposed six-factor sol ution offers a stable, intuitively sound and statistically supported f ramework for differentiation of depressive screening data into indepen dent dimensions. This, in turn, offers opportunities for clinical diff erentiation in both practice and research efforts using the GDS.