The CES-D 10 questions are reported in Appendix Table 1.
CHARLS uses the Chinese translation provided at the Center for
Epidemiologic Studies website. The answers for CES-D are on a
four-scale metric, from rarely, to some days (1e2 days), to occasionally
(3e4 days) to most of the time (5e7 days). We score these
answers using the metric suggested by Radloff (1977). Numbers
from 0 for rarely to 3 for most of the time are used for negative
questions such as “do you feel sad”. For positive questions such as
“do you feel happy”, the scoring is reversed from 0 for most of the
time to 3 for rarely. Boey (1999) reports a validation exercise of the
10 question CES-D among elderly respondents in China. Table 1
reports a standard validation exercise using the CHARLS data. The
Chronbach's a is 0.815 (Boey, 1999, reports a Chronbach a of
0.78e0.79), which indicates a reasonable level of internal
consistency