Psychometric Properties of the Malay Version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale: A Study of Husbands of Breast Cancer Patients in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The main objective of this paper is to examine the psychometric properties of the Malay Version of theHospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), tested on 67 husbands of the women who were diagnosed withbreast cancer. The eligible husbands were retrieved from the Clinical Oncology Clinic at three hospitals inKuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Data was collected at three weeks and ten weeks following surgery for breast cancerof their wives. The psychometric properties of the HADS were reported based on Cronbach’ alpha, IntraclassCorrelation Coefficients (ICC), Effect Size Index (ESI), sensitivity and discriminity of the scale. Internalconsistency of the scale is excellent, with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88 for Anxiety subscale and 0.79 for Depressionsubscale. Test-retest Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) is 0.35 and 0.42 for Anxiety and DepressionSubscale, respectively. Small mean differences were observed at test-retest measurement with ESI of 0.21 forAnxiety and 0.19 for Depression. Non-significant result was revealed for the discriminant validity (mastectomyvs lumpectomy). The Malay Version of the HADS is appropriate to measure the anxiety and depression amongthe husbands of the women with breast cancer in Malaysia.