Abstract

Since adolescence is a particularly vulnerable stage to present depressed mood, and because there is a greater emphasis on depression as a state with the consequent lack of instruments to evaluate it as a feature (understood as the tendency to respond in a depressive way to daily situations), 407 young people with an average age of 20.14 years were evaluated. As the result, a reliable scale of five items was obtained (α = .711) useful to assess depression trait in adolescents. Its validity was confirmed by the convergence of the obtained scores with those resulting from the IDERE (Ramirez, Grau, Martin & Grau, 1989).