Résumé :
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[BDSP. Notice produite par INIST qst9fR0x. Diffusion soumise à autorisation]. Women report more symptoms of depression than men. This is the conclusion of several surveys of the general population in various countries. However, critics argue that the use of general indexes of depression-and-distress-related feelings leads to an overestimation of the sex difference in depression. Besides depression, their argument goes, these scales tap, so called, "feminine" greater expressiveness. Furthermore, they give too much weight to milder feelings of distress or dysthymia. Data of the Panel Study of Belgian Households (PSBH) show that Belgian women have higher mean scores on a 17-item depression scale. Using confirmatory factor analysis on the Flemish subsample of 2 713 men and women, the nature of this sex difference is being examined. Two factor models-a simple one-dimensional model and a hierarchical three-dimensional model-are compared. Together with the estimation of the fit of these various models, the sex differences between the means on the latent variables are estimated. This facility of the structural equation modeling approach allows the evaluation of the difference in depression between men and women under several models. The analysis reveals a fairly robust sex difference in the self-rapportage of depressive behavior under the various models. Further results are being discussed.
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