Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is also known as major depression and is widely recognized worldwide as one of the most common mental disorders because it displays a relatively high prevalence in the general population. MDD often follows a chronic course and is associated with functional impairments and disabilities [1]. Given its prevalence and associated impairment, it is imperative to carry out accurate and sustainable assessments of depressive symptoms. This paper focuses on Chinese international students who travel to South Korea (hereafter Korea) in pursuit of higher education opportunities.

With a significant increase in the enrollment of Chinese international students in South Korea (hereafter Korea) over the past 10 years, mental health concerns for this population have become an increasingly important area of study. Chinese students represent the largest proportion of international students in Korea, followed by those from Vietnam and Mongolia. According to the National Institute for International Education [2], the number of international students enrolled in Korean higher education institutions increased by 75% to 68,833 students during the 2015–2019 academic years, while Chinese student enrollment increased by 47% to 71,067, representing 44.4% of international students [3]. International students, including Chinese nationals, inevitably experience a process of acculturation that can pose unwanted or unexpected challenges as they immerse themselves into their host country [4]. Acculturation is the broad process of cultural and psychological changes resulting from contact between two or more cultures [5]. Besides adjustment to a new social environment and educational system, international students encounter unique sources of stress such as a language barrier, financial difficulties, homesickness, culture shock, deficient academic relationships with instructors, and unsatisfactory peer associations [6-8]. Such phenomena consequently evoke acculturative stress in international students (i.e., strain stemming from life changes occurring during the acculturation process) [9]. In fact, the findings of previous studies conducted on the experiences of Chinese international students reveal their vulnerability to high levels of acculturative stress such as anxiety and depression [10, 11]. Other scholars have noted that physical environmental stressors, including housing and transportation issues, also elicit stress in international students [12].

Available evidence suggests that the depression level of Chinese students in Korea is higher than average. For example, studies that administered the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale-20 (CES-D) among a sample of Chinese international students in Korea reported their mean depressive symptoms scores at 16.19 and 24.33, which have been reported to be high based on the scale’s threshold score of 16 [13-15].

The increasing number of Chinese international students in Korea gives rise to greater demands for valid and reliable psychiatric research instruments. Depression is a common psychological problem for international students, but no studies have yet tested depression measures on Chinese international students in Korea. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) [16] and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) [17] are the most commonly used self-reporting measures of depression. However, BDI has been found to exhibit false positives at high rates, and some somatic symptoms may not be related to depression [18]. The PHQ is deemed preferable for use in clinical settings [19]. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) represents a promising depression screening instrument. This measure is commonly employed to detect the presence and severity of depressive symptoms in both clinical and non-clinical settings [14]. It has been recommended that the original 20-item design of CES-D should be shortened to enhance its clinical utility and ease of scoring and to increase the likelihood that participants answer all items [20]. Diverse short and simplified forms of the 20-item CES-D have been developed to minimize the respondent burden. The administration of the short-form in primary care and school settings is faster, and the likelihood of both clinical and non-clinical participants answering all of the questions is also augmented. The 11-item (CES-D 11) Iowa form developed by Kohout et al. [20] and the 10-item form (CES-D 10) developed by Andresen et al. [21] are the most commonly used abbreviated forms. The Andersen version exhibits robust psychometric properties in both clinical [1] and non-clinical samples of varied populations, including university students [22], transnational mothers [23], older adults [24], and adolescents [25], as indicated by its adequate internal reliability and construct validity. Despite wide psychometric support for CES-D 10, conflicting results of confirmatory factor analysis studies have elicited questions about the dimensionality of this instrument and provoked an ongoing debate concerning its underlying structure. For instance, Baron et al. [26] and Gonzalez et al. [27] have suggested that a one-factor model is most apt for data, but other researchers have consistently reported in favor of a two-factor model, including a 2-item positive affect factor and an 8-item negative affect factor, as offering the best fit [23-25]. Yet other scholars have found a three-factor structure to be most conducive [28]. These inconsistent findings might be attributed to the use of different statistical techniques, for example, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) vs. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and sample heterogeneity pertaining to (1) individuals with different cultural backgrounds, (2) differences in study sample age ranges, and (3) participant characteristics (e.g., a clinical sample compared to a non-clinical sample). CFA can clarify the issues in such situations, allowing the evaluation of competing structure models and restricting factor loadings, variances, and covariances/correlations to deliver a more parsimonious model [24].

Nezu et al. [29] evaluated the CES-D’s clinical utility as “limited” and appraised its research applicability as “high” because CES-D in all its versions (20, 11, and 10) evidenced high sensitivity to changes in depressive symptoms over time. A disadvantage of CES-D concerns its potential difficulties for the elderly or individuals with cognitive impairments, who may find the response format confusing [20]. Also, its low specificity observed through the different cut-off scores for major depression syndrome has led to recommendations that it is more suitable as a screening rather than a diagnostic tool [30].

Several studies in Korea have performed EFA and CFA on the Korean versions of the CES-D 20, CES-D 11, and CES-D 10 to examine the factor structure of this measure. The following results have been reported consistently: (1) the CES-D demonstrated high internal consistency [23, 31, 32]; (2) the EFA revealed a three-factor structure [32]; (3) CFA- based comparisons of single-factor and two-factor, and three-factor models have evinced that single and two-factor models offered a perfect fit to the data [23, 32]. Studies conducted by Heo et al. [31], Lee [23], and Park et al. [32] have confirmed the psychometric properties of the Korean versions of the CES-D, but at least three limitations currently prevent its deployment in the context of Korean universities and research projects. First, Lee’s [23] investigation included transnational mothers known as “geese,” whereas Park et al.’s [32] study encompassed parents of individuals with cerebral palsy; the international student sample of our study may differ qualitatively in many respects from samples that comprise parents. Second, the mean age of Lee’s [23] parent-based sample was 45.9 years (age range 35–62 years); although typical of questionnaire validation studies, this span was much wider than the age differential of the international students who participated in our study. In contrast to these previous studies, our sample comprised students who were quite young with a mean age of 20.6 years. Third, Heo et al. [31] used the CES-D 20 to assess depressive symptoms in adolescents aged between 13 and 16. Their study sample encompassed middle school students attending grades 1–3. The longer version of the concerned measure has been demonstrated to be effective as a tool for the screening of depression in adolescents [31]. The specified limitations allow the construal that the previously conducted studies do not sufficiently validate the applicability of the CES-D to Chinese international students studying in Korea. Therefore, a more theoretically sound version of the questionnaire administered to a more representative Chinese student sample is necessary and could provide more reliable data. In fact, the extant research has demonstrated that the CES-D 10 is applicable both to patients in clinical settings and to normal adults in larger communities [1, 22-28].

Moreover, universal school-based screening of youngsters would allow the identification of students who are currently facing or are at risk of experiencing internalizing problems associated with depression and would thus facilitate the prevention of the ailment [33]. We thus believe that it is necessary to examine the factor structure of the CES-D 10 as a first step toward the evaluation of its potential usefulness as a universal screening tool for Chinese international students in the university. Such an examination would also function to inform the best use of this screening tool. Although the CES-D 10’s factor structure and reliability have been validated in various settings, its psychometric properties have not been validated with Chinese students studying in Korea despite that population’s growth explosion. Given Chinese university students’ high prevalence of depression, an easily accessible and highly reliable screening instrument for depressive symptoms is increasingly needed. Furthermore, no study to date has evaluated the CES-D 10’s psychometric properties with this population in Korea. Therefore, this study’s purposes were (1) to examine the CES-D 10’s factor structure by testing competing models suggested by the literature to determine which provides the most parsimonious data fit, using a range of fit indices and CFA; and (2) to examine the scale’s reliability (i.e., internal consistency, mean inter-item correlation, and test-retest reliability).

To the best of our knowledge, the present study represents the first evaluation of the CES-D 10’s psychometric properties among Chinese international students in Korea.

The study found that the two-factor model, which divided items into DA/SR and PA constructs, fit the data better than both the one- and two-factor solutions. This is consistent with some previous studies that found the two-factor model provided the best fit compared to other models tested [23-25]. While internal consistencies of the total CES-D 10 and the presence of the DA/SR factor were found equivalently high, the PA factor’s internal consistency was relatively low, a result congruent with previous studies [24, 25]. This might be because the only two items in the PA factor are not related to each other or to DA/SR [25] and because a small number of items associated with the scale tend to have lower reliability because the number of items strongly affects alpha. The test-retest reliability of total CES-D 10 scores, as well as DA/SR and PA were adequate.

Despite support for the two-factor model, interpretation of the two-factor model’s fit

should be considered with caution. First, a correlation between DA/SR and PA factors was very low; the correlation’s magnitude was similar to those in other studies that supported a two-factor model [23-25]. As suggested by Schroevers et al. [43], a possible reason could be that these two items (PA) may measure other constructs in addition to depressive symptomatology, thereby resulting in a weak correlation. Specifically, these two items are worded in reverse (“I was happy” and “I felt hopeful about the future”); thus, higher scores indicate less depression. Bradley et al. [25] proposed that a better fit could be achieved if the CES-D scale was used with additional items or if both PA items were eliminated. However, the exclusion of items may not guarantee the increased reliability of the measure and may also render the newly validated scale incomparable to other published versions. Thus, the 10-item CES-D is frequently used in general populations across different countries despite potential weaknesses that may emerge from the retention of every item. It has demonstrated beneficial psychometric properties, and maintaining the same version is meaningful for comparative purposes.

. Another explanation is the moderation of emotions in East Asian cultures such as Korea and China, whose people often value modesty and self-effacement as cultural virtues [44, 45]. Iwata et al. [46] suggested that the two PA items could not distinguish non-depressed and depressed Japanese women because their culture embraces emotional moderation, so they might suppress the expression of PA. A Korean sample also evidenced such moderated self-reporting; they were less likely to endorse PA items, thus leading to high total CES-D scores [47].

In view of these possible reporting patterns among Asians, caution should be exercised when the CES-D 10 is applied to Asian samples, including ours, considering that prevalence rates might not represent all individuals’ true psychological health [24]. Perhaps the easiest way to address self-reporting bias and conform more closely to Asian cultures is to modify positively worded items into negatively worded items. For example, “hopeful” and “happy” items should be modified to “not hopeful” and “not happy.” In this way, the items might be more theoretically sound and more culturally relevant for Asian research samples [24].

The two PA items’ disproportional factor loadings were consistent with previous studies [23-25]. As suggested by Bradley et al. [25], a possible reason could be that item 8 “happy” differs from item 5 “hopeful.” Although happiness and hopefulness have PA qualities that can occur as states, they are nevertheless distinct. Thus, these items should not be grouped together. Bradley et al. [25] also suggested that this PA factor might need additional items or that the items need modification to produce a better-fitting model.

This study is not without limitations. First, our sample size was relatively small and did not allow us to test more complex, higher-order models. Our attempt to do so led to an inadmissible solution when a bifactor model was tested. Future research employing a larger, more diverse sample would provide more support for the CES-D 10’s factor structure and allow investigators to test more complex, higher-order models. Next, this study recruited only undergraduate students, so its findings might not generalize to other age groups or populations. Generalizability might also be limited by the sample’s large number of female students. Thus, because the CES-D 10’s structures may differ for males and females, models should be assessed by gender. For example, the two-factor structure has been validated in both female and male elderly Chinese samples, and its structure varied across those groups [24]. We did not attempt this procedure due to the relatively few male students. Another limitation of the study was that no convergent measure was included. Therefore, prospective research initiatives should consider assessing the convergent validity of CES-D by measuring its associations with similar constructs such as the PHQ-9 and BDI.

Despite these limitations, our findings can potentially inform international student advisors, health care professionals, and researchers in the field of depression. Understanding how the CES-D 10 functions among Chinese international students, knowing that it is a valid measure for minorities in Korea, such as Chinese international students, might increase its accuracy of administration and interpretation. In turn, the CES-D 10’s proper use might improve health care professionals’ understanding of depressive symptoms among Chinese international students studying in Korea. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the two-factor CES-D 10 model has satisfactory psychometric properties and can be used for assessing depressive symptoms in Chinese university students.