Background: Mental health experts commonly rely on subjective interviews and resource-intensive projective tools to assess adolescent mental health problems. A validated Hindi version of the depression, anxiety, and stress scale for youth-21-item (DASS-Y-21) remains unavailable for the Indian adolescent population. Methods: The present study aimed to translate and validate DASS-Y-21 into Hindi among juvenile delinquents in India. The study complied with COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health measurement instruments and STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology guidelines for reporting findings. This study utilized a cross-sectional design with purposive sampling to study 351 Hindi-speaking male juvenile delinquents within the age range of 10–19 years from two detention centers across Delhi, India. The analysis was conducted in four stages: (a) descriptive statistics, (b) reliability testing, (c) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and (d) Rasch analysis. Results: All recruited participants were males with a mean age of 16.3 (±1.18) years. Descriptive and normality analysis suggested higher variability in the data. The item-rest correlations ranged from moderate to high levels. Item drop test revealed Cronbach’s ( α ) and McDonald’s ( ω ) values > 0.90. In CFA, the comparative fit index, Tucker-Lewis index, standardized root mean square residual, and root mean square error of approximation, the model showed good fit. The rating scale method (RSM) had a lower log-likelihood value (−7,989) than the partial credit model (PCM) (−7,870). CFA confirmed the good fit of the 3-factor model of DASS-Y among Indian Hindi-speaking juvenile delinquents. In Rasch analysis, PCM indicated moderate difficulty for the items. Conclusion: The study translated DASS-Y-21 into Hindi and evaluated its psychometric properties among Indian juvenile delinquents. Reliability tests confirm good internal consistency. Both PCM and RSM models demonstrated adequate fit with slight differences in log-likelihood values.
Banga et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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