Measuring depression in Korean Americans: development of the Kim Depression Scale for Korean Americans.

This article discusses issues related to measuring depression in linguistic and cultural minority groups, using Korean Americans as an example. The article details the process of developing and evaluating a depression-screening tool for Korean Americans. A series of focus groups was conducted in the development stage of the study. In the evaluation phase, 154 first-generation Korean Americans participated in the assessment of the psychometric properties of the newly developed depression scale, the Kim Depression Scale for Korean Americans (KDSKA). The KDSKA showed adequate reliability, validity, and potentially high sensitivity as a depression-screening tool for Korean Americans.