EVALUATION OF DEPRESSION CRITERIA USING ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS: A CASE STUDY ON UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SABAH SCIENCES’ SCHOOLS

ASDALIFAH TALIBE*, ZATURRAWIAH ALI OMAR & TONG SIN BEI

School of Science and Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 88400 Kota Kinabalu,
Sabah, Malaysia.
*asdalifah@ums.edu.my

ABSTRACT. Depression has been ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the fourth most disabling disease in mental health problems. The aim of this study is therefore to determine the most common criteria of depression among students from five sciences’ schools in Universiti Malaysia Sabah by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The criterion was based on Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) I. There were three main criteria and were broken down into several sub-criteria in detail. The main criteria were negative attitudes towards self, performance impairment and somatic disturbances. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 19. The results showed that the collected data were random (run test of median = 0.247, mean = 0.087) and normally distributed (ShapiroWilk test = 0.326). The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.901 indicated that the questionnaire was reliable. The results of this study indicated somatic (bodily) disturbance and insomnia with the same relative weight of 0.4111 were the most common criteria and sub-criteria of depression for all school and also for different schools. Since all the consistency ratios were less than or greater than 0.1, the levels of consistency were acceptable.

KEYWORDS. Depression, Analytic Hierarchy Process, selection criteria

 

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