The Use of Qualitative Case Studies of Graduate School Students: A Quantitative Analysis of their Depression Scale

Abstract

This study analyzed the depression scale of graduate school students of a certain State University in Region VIII, Philippines. It aimed to know the socio-demographic profile of the respondents in terms of age, gender, civil status, religion, program major and program level in correlation to their scale of depression. There were one hundred thirty-seven (137) graduate school students who participated as the respondents. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), a standardized tool by the Psychology Foundation of Australia was administered as an instrument. A simple random sampling, descriptive statistics and case notes from the Guidance Office were obtained and to ensure the validity of responses the researchers used a direct administration approach of the said standardized tool. The results generally show that the younger the age, the higher is the scale of depression. The result also implied an extreme scale of depression for females than males. As to civil status, the result represented a high leaning of depression for those single respondents whereas for religion, non-roman Catholics have a higher tendency to be depressed than Roman Catholics. As regards to program majors, the results showed that the master of arts in education (MAEd) program students tend to be vulnerable to experiencing depression among other programs. Lastly, with regard to program level, respondents taking up master's programs tend to have a higher scale of depression than students taking up doctorate programs.