Analysis of effects of sex and age in response to items on the CES-D scale.

Analyses of differences in response to individual items in the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale based on sex and age breakdown are reported for a sample of 1,000 adults from Los Angeles County. Overall, results are comparable to those obtained in other population studies. Analyses performed separately for age and sex groups show response differences on individual items which affect the summated score. The interitem correlations are shown to be much higher for women that men, but overall the index assesses a comparable underlying dimension of depression for the two sexes.