Depression Adjective Check Lists, Form E (DACL)

Abstract

The Depression Adjective Check Lists (DACL), developed by Bernard Lubin in 1965 and refined across subsequent decades, represents one of the most widely utilized brief psychometric instruments designed to assess self-reported depressive mood and transient affective states. Form E is one of several parallel forms (specifically belonging to the set of Forms E, F, and G, which contain 34 items each, alongside earlier 32-item forms A, B, C, and D) constructed to facilitate repeated-measures designs, longitudinal tracking, and immediate state-level affective evaluation without the confounding practice effects common to symptom-inventory questionnaires. Consisting of 34 carefully selected adjectives, Form E captures both the presence of negative affectivity (depressive adjectives, e.g., Unhappy, Downcast, Hopeless) and the absence of positive affectivity (non-depressive or positive adjectives, e.g., Active, Composed, Vigorous). Respondents are instructed to check each adjective that describes how they feel either “today” or “right now” (state instructions) or, less commonly, how they “generally feel” (trait instructions). Scoring is dichotomous: one point is scored for checking a keyed depression-positive adjective, and one point is scored for omitting (failing to check) a keyed positive/non-depressive adjective, yielding a theoretical total score range from 0 to 34, where higher scores reflect greater depressive mood severity. Psychometric investigations across diverse clinical, non-clinical, geriatric, and adolescent samples demonstrate robust internal consistency (Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging between .82 and .93) alongside substantial concurrent and convergent validity with established depression inventories such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Depression scale (MMPI-D). This article provides a comprehensive academic review of Form E of the DACL, examining its theoretical architecture, psychometric properties, factor structure, scoring protocol, clinical utility, and research applications.

Keywords

Depression Adjective Check Lists, DACL, Form E, Bernard Lubin, affective state assessment, state depression, mood measurement, psychometrics, adjective checklists, positive and negative affect

Authors

The Depression Adjective Check Lists were conceived, constructed, and standardized by Bernard Lubin, Ph.D. (1923–2006). Dr. Lubin was an eminent American clinical psychologist, psychometrician, and prolific researcher whose academic career spanned leadership roles in university faculties, hospital administration, and psychological research institutions. He served as Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for the Study of Metropolitan Problems in Education at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC), as well as holding academic appointments at the Indiana University School of Medicine and Hahnemann Medical College.

Throughout his career, Dr. Lubin authored and co-authored dozens of psychological assessments, books, and empirical papers dedicated to the measurement of human emotion, suicide risk, group dynamics, and clinical psychopathology. His foundational 1965 monograph published in the Archives of General Psychiatry introduced the initial DACL forms, followed by extensive normative updates, including the standardized DACL manual published through Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR) and Educational and Industrial Testing Service (EdITS). Collaboration on normative and psychometric expansions also included contributions from colleagues such as Marvin Zuckerman, Alice W. Lubin, and various clinical research teams examining psychiatric populations across North America.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Depression Adjective Check Lists, Form E (DACL-E) is to provide a rapid, ecologically valid, and psychometrically sound measurement of self-reported depressive mood state. Unlike long psychiatric rating scales and structured diagnostic interviews that evaluate severe vegetative, somatic, and cognitive symptoms over intervals spanning weeks or months (such as the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria), the DACL was purposefully engineered to isolate and quantify the phenomenological, subjective feeling-state of depression in real time.

Clinical and Research Applications

The development of Form E addressed several specific logistical and methodological challenges inherent to mood measurement in psychiatric, medical, and experimental psychology contexts:

• Repeated-Measures and Time-Series Research: Traditional depression inventories suffer from profound practice effects, memory recall bias, and item fatigue when administered across consecutive days or multiple sessions within a single day. Form E is one of a parallel family of lists (Forms A through G) exhibiting equivalent psychometric distributions and item-difficulty parameters, allowing clinicians and researchers to assess mood trajectories during psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy trials, acute laboratory mood inductions, or ecological momentary assessment protocols without repeating identical stimulus items.
• Rapid Clinical Screening: In inpatient psychiatric wards, outpatient mental health clinics, and primary care settings, patient cognitive capacity, psychomotor retardation, or severe fatigue may render 50-to-100-item self-report batteries burdensome. Form E requires only two to three minutes to complete, minimizing respondent burden while generating an immediate indicator of dysphoric mood.
• Experimental Mood Induction: Experimental researchers studying cognitive bias, affective neuroscience, stress reactivity, and memory consolidation frequently manipulate emotional states using film clips, Velten statements, or social evaluative stressors. Form E serves as an ideal pre- and post-manipulation manipulation check due to its extreme sensitivity to momentary affective shifts.
• Medical and Geriatric Populations: In medical contexts—such as oncology, post-myocardial infarction, or stroke rehabilitation—conventional depression instruments frequently generate false-positive scores because somatic symptoms (e.g., insomnia, anorexia, fatigue, loss of energy) overlap with medical illness. By relying predominantly on verbal-affective descriptors rather than neurovegetative signs, Form E provides a cleaner appraisal of psychological dysphoria uncontaminated by physical illness.

Psychological Construct

The central construct measured by the DACL Form E is depressive affect, conceptualized primarily as an acute mood state characterized by subjective feelings of sorrow, dysphoria, despondency, diminished vitality, and social-emotional disconnection. Historically, psychometric research into depression has oscillated between viewing depression as a categorical clinical disorder versus a continuous dimensional construct spanning normal sadness to incapacitating melancholia. Dr. Lubin positioned the DACL within a continuous, state-oriented framework, reflecting the direct subjective awareness of emotional tone.

The Dual-Pole Nature of Affective State

Form E operationalizes depressive affect through a balanced interaction between two operational domains:

• Depressive Affect Markers (Negative Affectivity): Form E contains 22 specific adjectives denoting explicit dysphoric states. These words encompass core manifestations of psychological pain, demoralization, and cognitive pessimism: sadness (e.g., Unhappy, Blue, Downcast), profound discouragement (e.g., Dispirited, Cheerless, Glum, Dejected), social and existential isolation (e.g., Lonely, Lost, Forlorn), severe emotional distress and psychic burden (e.g., Distressed, Burdened, Chained, Tortured), and catastrophic hopelessness (e.g., Broken, Hopeless, Finished, Wilted). Endorsement of these items directly indicates acute depressive distress.
• Non-Depressive / Positive Affect Markers (Positive Affectivity): Form E integrates 12 counter-valenced adjectives representing psychological equanimity, energetic arousal, vitality, and emotional resilience (e.g., Active, Composed, Free, Good, Vigorous, Peaceful, Well, Strong, Great, Lucky, Safe, Fit). In Lubin’s model, the absence of positive affect is recognized as an equally crucial dimension of depression (anhedonia). Consequently, when an individual fails to endorse these positive descriptors, that omission contributes positively toward the aggregate depression score.

This dual-faceted structure aligns with modern affective science, which emphasizes that clinical depression is not merely elevated negative affect, but rather the simultaneous combination of hyperactive negative affect and severely depleted positive affect or reward responsiveness.

Theoretical Framework

The construction of the DACL was theoretically grounded in several convergence points within mid-twentieth-century affective psychology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive approaches to depression.

Psycholinguistic and Adjective Scaling Traditions

The operational premise of using self-descriptive adjectives to quantify internal emotional states emerged from the psycholinguistic traditions pioneered by Allport, Odbert, and Cattell, later adapted for clinical measurement by Harrison Gough (Adjective Check List) and Nowlis (Mood Adjective Check List). Lubin recognized that natural language contains refined semantic markers capable of communicating nuanced subjective experiences. By selecting common, high-frequency English vocabulary words, Lubin ensured that respondents across broad educational and socioeconomic backgrounds could quickly map their internal phenomenological reality onto validated linguistic tokens without requiring complex reflective self-analysis.

Two-Factor Models of Affect

The construction of Form E anticipates the later structural models of affect formalized by Auke Tellegen, David Watson, and Lee Anna Clark in their Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) framework, as well as James Russell’s circumplex model of affect. These models demonstrate that human affective experience is structured around two orthogonal or partially correlated axes: Negative Affect (NA), representing the dimension of subjective distress and unpleasurable engagement, and Positive Affect (PA), reflecting the degree of energy, enthusiasm, and pleasurable alertness. Form E operationalizes depression precisely at the nexus of high NA (checking words like Distressed, Tortured, Awful) and low PA (rejecting words like Vigorous, Active, Fit).

Cognitive Theories of Depression

Form E also interfaces directly with Aaron T. Beck’s cognitive triad model of depression. According to cognitive theory, depressive schemas selectively activate negative conceptualizations regarding the self, the personal world, and the future. Words on Form E such as Criticized, Burdened, and Chained capture the sense of an intolerable environment and perceived self-deficiency, whereas items such as Hopeless and Finished capture the negative cognitive anticipation of the future.

Validity

The psychometric validity of DACL Form E has been documented across dozens of clinical trials, normative validation samples, and laboratory investigations spanning several decades.

Construct and Criterion-Related Validity

In his foundational validation studies, Lubin (1965, 1981) demonstrated that the DACL decisively discriminates between clinical psychiatric patients diagnosed with major affective disorders and matched non-depressed psychiatric or normal community controls. In clinical validation cohorts:

• Depressed psychiatric inpatients exhibited significantly higher mean scores on Form E ($M \approx 18.5 – 22.0$) compared to non-depressed psychiatric controls ($M \approx 9.0 – 11.5$) and healthy community adults ($M \approx 6.0 – 8.5$).
• Effect sizes for group differentiation consistently exceed Cohen’s $d = 1.20$, demonstrating large discriminative capacity.
• Psychiatric patients undergoing clinical recovery demonstrated marked score reductions on Form E from admission to discharge, tracking clinical remission with statistical significance ($p < .001$).

Convergent Validity

Extensive correlation studies have examined the relationship between DACL Form E and other standard self-report and clinician-rated depression indices:

• Beck Depression Inventory (BDI): Correlations between Form E and the BDI consistently range between $r = .65$ and $r = .82$ across clinical and university student samples, establishing robust convergence while reflecting the DACL’s purer focus on affective state compared to the BDI’s vegetative-somatic content.
• Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS): Convergent correlations with the Zung SDS fall between $r = .61$ and $r = .78$.
• MMPI Depression Scale (Scale 2): Significant positive correlations ($r = .55$ to $r = .72$) have been established between Form E and the MMPI-D scale.
• Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL): Form E correlates strongly ($r > .75$) with the Depression scale of the MAACL developed by Zuckerman and Lubin.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated through differential correlations with anxiety and somatic measures. Although anxiety and depression share general distress variance, Form E correlates more modestly with pure somatic scales ($r \approx .30 – .45$) than with affective-cognitive inventories. Furthermore, in clinical studies assessing cognitive impairment (e.g., via the Mini-Mental State Examination), Form E scores operate independently of cognitive functioning levels, proving its clinical utility in psycho-geriatric screening.

Reliability

The reliability parameters of DACL Form E reflect its dual design as an internally cohesive assessment instrument that remains sensitive to temporal fluctuations in mood state.

Internal Consistency

Because items are scored dichotomously (1 or 0), internal consistency has been evaluated primarily using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20), split-half reliability coefficients, and Cronbach’s alpha:

• Normal Adult Samples: KR-20 and alpha coefficients for Form E typically range from $.82$ to $.91$, demonstrating high internal cohesion among the 34 descriptors.
• Clinical Psychiatric Samples: In inpatient and outpatient psychiatric groups, internal consistency estimates are frequently higher, spanning $.88$ to $.94$, reflecting widespread endorsement of depressive items and systematic rejection of positive items.
• Split-Half Reliability: Spearman-Brown corrected split-half coefficients across Forms E, F, and G consistently yield values exceeding $.85$.

Test-Retest Stability

Test-retest reliability findings for Form E depend directly on the time frame specified in the test instructions:

• State Instructions (“How you feel right now / today”): When administered under state instructions, test-retest reliability across short intervals (e.g., 1 to 2 hours) remains moderate to high ($r = .65 – .80$). Over longer intervals (e.g., 1 to 2 weeks), test-retest stability coefficients naturally drop to between $r = .35$ and $r = .55$. In psychometric theory, this temporal variability is expected and desirable: it confirms that Form E measures dynamic, mutable affective states rather than static, unchangeable personality traits.
• Trait Instructions (“How you generally feel”): When respondents are instructed to indicate how they typically feel over extended periods, stability coefficients rise substantially, yielding test-retest correlations between $r = .70$ and $r = .82$ over a two-week interval.

Parallel Form Equivalence

Crucially for longitudinal and repeated-measures experimental research, alternate-form reliability between Form E and its companion forms (Form F and Form G) is remarkably high. Pearson correlation coefficients between Form E and Forms F or G administered on the same day range between $r = .85$ and $r = .93$, verifying that Forms E, F, and G function as genuine parallel psychometric equivalents.

Factor Analysis

Structural evaluations of the DACL using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have provided deep insights into the latent dimensionality of Form E.

Two-Factor Dimensional Structure

Although Form E is routinely scored as a single unidimensional composite reflecting overall depressive mood severity, factor analytic investigations routinely reveal a robust, correlated two-factor latent structure:

• Factor 1: Negative Affect / Depressed Mood: This factor accounts for the largest proportion of total variance (typically 30% to 42%). High factor loadings ($lambda > .50$) are observed on adjectives explicitly conveying psychological despair, despondency, and emotional exhaustion: Downcast ($\lambda \approx .72$), Dispirited ($\lambda \approx .70$), Dejected ($\lambda \approx .68$), Hopeless ($\lambda \approx .66$), Unhappy ($\lambda \approx .65$), and Distressed ($\lambda \approx .61$).
• Factor 2: Positive Affect / Vitality / Well-Being: The second major factor accounts for an additional 12% to 18% of variance. Strong negative loadings on the depression continuum (or positive loadings on an inverted vitality factor) are found for items such as Good ($\lambda \approx -.74$), Well ($\lambda \approx -.71$), Strong ($\lambda \approx -.68$), Vigorous ($\lambda \approx -.65$), Active ($\lambda \approx -.62$), and Composed ($\lambda \approx -.58$).

Higher-Order Unidimensionality

CFA studies evaluating hierarchical bifactor models demonstrate that while the two lower-order factors (Negative Affect and Positive Affect) exist, a dominant overarching general factor of “State Dysphoria” accounts for more than 75% of the common variance. Standard model fit indices for the bifactor solution frequently show strong fit ($ ext{CFI} > .92$,$ ext{TLI} > .90$,$ ext{RMSEA} approx .055 – .065$), providing rigorous empirical justification for summing all 34 items into a single, unified composite score for clinical and research purposes.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Name: Depression Adjective Check Lists, Form E (DACL-E)
• Author: Bernard Lubin, Ph.D.
• Year of Development: 1965 (Initial DACL publication); 1981 (Comprehensive Standardization Manual)
• Instrument Type: Brief self-report affective state checklist
• Number of Items: 34 items (adjectives)
• Item Composition:
  • 22 Depressive Adjectives (keyed positively for depression)
  • 12 Non-Depressive / Positive Adjectives (keyed negatively / reverse-keyed)
• Response Format: Check-all-that-apply (Dichotomous endorsement: checked vs. unchecked)
• Administration Time: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes
• Keying and Scoring Rules:
  • Depressive Adjectives (Score 1 point if CHECKED):
    1. Unhappy, 3. Blue, 4. Downcast, 5. Dispirited, 7. Distressed, 8. Cheerless, 9. Lonely, 11. Lost, 12. Broken, 14. Burdened, 15. Forlorn, 19. Apathetic, 20. Chained, 22. Dejected, 23. Awful, 24. Glum, 26. Finished, 27. Hopeless, 29. Tortured, 30. Listless, 32. Wilted, 33. Criticized.
  • Positive / Non-Depressive Adjectives (Score 1 point if NOT CHECKED / OMITTED):
    2. Active, 6. Composed, 10. Free, 13. Good, 16. Vigorous, 17. Peaceful, 18. Well, 21. Strong, 25. Great, 28. Lucky, 31. Safe, 34. Fit.
  • Total Score Range: 0 to 34 points.
  • Score Interpretation: Higher total scores reflect greater levels of state depressive affect. In general adult norms, scores between 0 and 8 fall within the normal non-depressed range; scores from 9 to 14 indicate mild depressive mood; scores from 15 to 20 denote moderate depressive affect; and scores of 21 and above indicate severe dysphoria requiring comprehensive clinical evaluation.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Depression Adjective Check Lists (Forms A through G) were introduced in 1965 by Bernard Lubin in the Archives of General Psychiatry and further standardized in manuals published in 1981. The commercial psychometric rights, standardized assessment forms, scoring keys, and normative reference manuals are proprietary materials distributed and managed by EdITS (Educational and Industrial Testing Service) (www.edits.net) and historically through Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR).

Qualified researchers, licensed psychologists, and clinical organizations can purchase test booklets, administration manuals, and scoring stencils directly from the publisher. For academic research and grant-funded clinical trials, permissions for reproduction or integration into computerized testing platforms may be requested directly from EdITS under standard scholarly licensing agreements. Fees vary based on quantity, scoring format, and research licensing protocols.

References

• Lubin, B. (1965). Adjective checklists for measurement of depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 12(1), 57–62. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1965.01720310059007
• Lubin, B. (1967). Manual for the Depression Adjective Check Lists. Educational and Industrial Testing Service (EdITS).
• Lubin, B. (1981). Manual for the Depression Adjective Check Lists. Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. (PAR).
• Lubin, B., & Himelstein, P. (1976). Reliability of the Depression Adjective Check Lists. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 32(3), 629–630. 3.0.co;2-t” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4679(197407)30:3<392::aid-jclp2270300339>3.0.co;2-t
• McDowell, I. (2006). Measuring Health: A Guide to Rating Scales and Questionnaires (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195165678.001.0001
• Zuckerman, M., & Lubin, B. (1965). Manual for the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List. Educational and Industrial Testing Service.

Items of the Scale