I am currently doing my psychometric evaluation on ryff's scale and would like to use Zung's scale for my divergent validity. I am an undergrad student. Can I administer it?
As long as you're being supervised by your professor, yes. It's just a self-report scale & was published in a journal to which anyone can obtain access - there are no special limitations on who can use it. Same with Ryff's scales, I believe.
by the way, is it okay if the respondents are not clinically diagnosed as having a depression?
Yes. The Zung scale is intended to quantify how depressed a person is, not whether they can be diagnosed with a specific disorder. But if you are running a correlational study, you'll want to sample a population that varies quite a bit in depression level, because you need variability in order to correlate well with anything. (Note: in general, college students will work fine for this purpose.)
The Zung's SDS is a self-reported scale that is self-adminintered by the individual that is filling it. In the real life some patients need aid and assistance for filling self-reported questionnaires, however you (the researcher) must be as neutral and less intrussive as possible.
This scale can be used as a screening tool to detect cases of 'possible depression' and as a tool to measure and monitor the severity of a depressive syndrome
However, there is an ethical problem and you should think about it. What about those respondents with high scores indicating 'possible depression'? What will you do with them? I believe that at least they should be informed of the result and addressed to their doctor
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