The purpose of this study was to investigate the factorial validity of the 4DSQ in a Zimbabwean working population. The 4DSQ is a recently developed measure of distress, depression, anxiety and somatisation developed by Terluin (1996). An online survey was administered through survey monkey to employees on the database of a local consulting firm. A convenient sample (N= 819) provided the data set for this analysis. The Cronbach’s α for the 4DSQ ranged from .89 to .96 based on the whole sample. The sample was randomly split into two samples; test sample (N= 410) and holdout sample (409). The data on the test sample was subjected to exploratory factor analysis yielding 4 factors. When subjected to confirmatory factor analysis 3 factors fitted the data better than the 4 factor model. The three factors in the new scale are depression, anxiety and somatisation excluding the distress factor. The 3 factor scale was then validated on holdout sample and it was replicated. The Cronbach’s α for the 3 factor scale ranged from .78 to .96. Results are discussed in relation to the Zimbabwean context.
