Robert Zemore

The depression proneness rating scale: Reliability, validity, and factor structure

This study describes the development of the Depression Proneness Rating Scale (DPRS), a brief, self-administered measure of the tendency to experience frequent, long-lasting, and severe depressions, and three investigations into the scale’s reliability, validity, and factor structure. Study 1, using 100 university students, found a stability coefficient of .82 for the DPRS over a test-retest interval of nine weeks. Further, Time 1 (T1) DPRS scores predicted Time 2 (T2) symptoms of depression, even after adjusting for Time 1 symptoms (R2 Change=.03). Study 2, using 440 university students, found the DPRS to be a better predictor of past depressive episodes (r=.41 to .47) than was the Beck Depression Inventory (r=.32). Study 3, using 1101 university students, found that all 13 items of the DPRS loaded .40 or greater on a single factor for both males and females. Overall, results provide substantial evidence for the DPRS as a valid, unidimensional, and practical measure of depression proneness.

Depression-Proneness, Low Self-Esteem, Unhappy Outlook, and Narcissistic Vulnerability

A personality inventory of 40 self-descriptive items that had previously discriminated between remitted, formerly depressed women and women with no psychiatric history was administered to 32 male and 32 female university students, along with a recently developed measure of depression-proneness. Measures of current severity of depression (the Beck Depression Inventory) and current level of depressed affect (the DACL) were also included. Factor analyses showed that the items of the personality inventory defined three major factors, labeled low self-esteem, unhappy outlook, and narcissistic vulnerability. Partial correlations, controlling for current level of depression and depressed affect, indicated statistically significant relationships between measures of depression-proneness and measures of low self-esteem and unhappy outlook—but not narcissistic vulnerability. The utility of the depression-proneness measure in investigating vulnerability to depression was noted.

Cognitive Styles and Proneness to Depressive Symptoms in University Women

To assess the relations between depressotypic cognitions and depression proneness, the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale and the Attributional Style Questionnaire were administered to 99 university women, along with measures of depression proneness and current affective state. Dysfunctional attitudes and attributional style were both found to correlate significantly with depression proneness, as measured by the Depression Proneness Rating Scales, and with current affective state, as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory and the Depression Adjective Checklist. However, when current affective state was statistically controlled, only dysfunctional attitudes continued to show a reliable association with depression proneness. These results support Becks cognitive model of depression but not the revised learned-helplessness model of depression.

Success of covert negative reinforcement is not the result of operant conditioning.

In the covert negative reinforcement procedure, a client is asked to imagine an unpleasant situation and then to imagine performing the adaptive response whose frequency the therapist-wishes to increase. According to Cautela, the imagined adaptive response should increase in frequency because of its association with the termination of the unpleasant image, just as escape-conditioning leads to an increase in the frequency of a response that terminates a noxious stimulus. Using 27 college students who showed an aversion to harmless snakes, this investigation attempted to test Cautelas conditioning rationale by comparing covert negative reinforcement with a procedure containing all of the elements of covert negative reinforcement except for the theoretically essential pairing of the imagined unpleasant situation with the imagined adaptive response. Self-report and behavioral measures of snake aversion indicated no consistent differences in the effectiveness of these two treatments, although both treatments were significantly more effective than no treatment. Over-all, the results of this experiment were interpreted as contradicting the escape-conditioning explanation of covert negative reinforcement.