Robustness and findings of a web-based system for depression assessment in a university work context

Abstract

[EN] Depression is associated with absenteeism and presentism, problems in workplace relationships and loss of productivity and quality. The present work describes the validation of a web-based system for the assessment of depression in the university work context. The basis of the system is the Spanish version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). A total of 185 participants completed the BDI-II web-based assessment, including 88 males and 97 females, 70 faculty members and 115 staff members. A high level of internal consistency reliability was confirmed. Based on the results of our web-based BDI-II, no significant differences were found in depression severity between gender, age or workers' groups. The main depression risk factors reported were: Changes in sleep, Loss of energy, Tiredness or fatigue and Loss of interest. However significant differences were found by gender in Changes in appetite, Difficulty of concentration and Loss of interest in sex; males expressed less loss of interest in sex than females with a statistically significant difference. Our results indicate that the data collected is coherent with previous BDI-II studies. We conclude that the web-based system based on the BDI-II is psychometrically robust and can be used to assess depression in the university working community.Funding for this study was provided by the authors' various departments, and partially by the CrowdHealth Project (Collective Wisdom Driving Public Health Policies [727560]), the MTS4up project (DPI2016-80054-R) and patient-centered pathways of early palliative care, supportive ecosystems and appraisal standard (825750).Asensio-Cuesta, S.; Bresó, A.; Sáez Silvestre, C.; Garcia-Gomez, JM. (2019). Robustness and findings of a web-based system for depression assessment in a university work context. 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