Table 3.

Descriptive statistics of each item in the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21) across years.

Scale	Item	Year 1		Year 2		Year 3		Year 4
		Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Depression	I couldn’t seem to experience any positive feeling at all	0.45	0.70	0.50	0.73	0.53	0.69	0.53	0.70
	I found it difficult to work up the initiative to do things	0.62	0.78	0.66	0.80	0.61	0.77	0.49	0.68
	I felt that I had nothing to look forward to	0.44	0.73	0.55	0.78	0.52	0.75	0.52	0.71
	I felt down-hearted and blue	0.67	0.75	0.66	0.74	0.65	0.73	0.55	0.67
	I was unable to become enthusiastic about anything	0.44	0.73	0.47	0.73	0.47	0.67	0.48	0.66
	I felt I wasn’t worth much as a person	0.87	0.86	0.88	0.89	0.82	0.82	0.76	0.76
	I felt that life was meaningless	0.16	0.47	0.18	0.49	0.25	0.56	0.28	0.55
Anxiety	I was aware of dryness of my mouth	1.05	0.89	0.98	0.87	0.86	0.76	0.75	0.69
	I experienced breathing difficulty	0.30	0.61	0.34	0.62	0.37	0.62	0.40	0.60
	I experienced trembling	0.22	0.51	0.22	0.53	0.23	0.51	0.27	0.53
	I was worried about situations in which I might panic and make a fool of myself	1.08	0.85	1.01	0.85	0.87	0.82	0.72	0.75
	I felt I was close to panic	0.21	0.53	0.26	0.60	0.32	0.61	0.34	0.61
	I was aware of the action of my heart in the absence of physical exertion	0.36	0.63	0.34	0.64	0.37	0.63	0.38	0.59
	I felt scared without any good reason	0.48	0.72	0.46	0.72	0.52	0.70	0.46	0.66
Stress	I found it hard to wind down	0.73	0.83	0.78	0.85	0.71	0.78	0.59	0.71
	I tended to over-react to situations	0.87	0.85	0.88	0.83	0.86	0.78	0.82	0.70
	I felt that I was using a lot of nervous energy	1.24	0.92	1.30	0.93	1.10	0.82	0.88	0.78
	I found myself getting agitated	0.47	0.66	0.47	0.67	0.53	0.66	0.47	0.63
	I found it difficult to relax	0.79	0.85	0.88	0.89	0.84	0.82	0.72	0.74
	I was intolerant of anything that kept me from getting on with what I was doing	0.67	0.73	0.67	0.77	0.66	0.72	0.56	0.68
	I felt that I was rather touchy	0.77	0.83	0.86	0.86	0.80	0.78	0.72	0.76
Severity Degree Scores	Depression	7.30		7.79		7.70		7.22
	Anxiety	7.40		7.24		7.10		6.63
	Stress	11.07		11.68		11.00		9.53

Note: SD = Standard Deviation.