Amenson and Lewinsohn (1981)

Question 1

Prevalence

Answer 1

the proportion of a population found to have a disorder. Lifetime prevalence (LTP)
is the proportion of a population that at some point in their life has experienced the disorder

Question 2

Artefact hypothesis

Answer 2

Prevalence of depression is equal among men and women, but women
report and seek help for depression more than men do- tendency of clinical psychologists to over
diagnose depression in women

Question 3

Aim

Answer 3

attempts to explain why there is a higher prevalence of MDD in women than in men

Question 4

Procedure

Answer 4

Randomly selected from a voter registration list
- Participants told they were apart of a study of “the understanding of psychological health
and its relationship to what people do, think and feel”
- Assessed for depressive symptoms through questionnaire and semi- structured interview
- Part of questionnaire was the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CESD) which measures the intensity of depressive symptoms
- Women and men were divided into high, medium, and low symptom level based on their
score
- Compared CES-D scores to self-reported symptoms with clinical diagnosis

Question 5

Results

Answer 5

Men and women with equal reported symptom levels were equally likely to be diagnosed
as depressed.
- Self-labelling and clinical diagnosis generally agreed for both males and females
- Suggests that there are actual differences in prevalence of depression in males and
females and that is not the result of reporting of clinical bias

Question 6

Evaluation

Answer 6

Women diagnosed as depressed less frequently labeled themselves as depressed, meaning
the studies that relied on self-data may underrepresent level of depressed women.
- Naturalistic conditions- high ecological validity
- Study was done in individualistic cultures so it may be difficult to generalize findings to
cultures where depressive symptoms are stigmatized- low cross-cultural validity
- Lacks temporal validity