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PIM University , Banja Luka , Bosnia and Herzegovina
“Birthday blues” is sometimes used in epidemiological studies to describe occasionally observed effect of higher suicide ratios around birthdays. It is also colloquially used to describe a general feeling of disappointment, anxiety, etc. due to another year passing by, low achievement, or not having the expectations regarding birthday celebration or gifts met. In this study, a preliminary attempt was made to operationalize “birthday blues” as an individual differences construct. First, a questionnaire comprising 68 items was developed. Based on initial tests on a sample of 47 participants, it was reduced to 51 items. That questionnaire version was tested on 285 participants (51.6% male) of the average age of 27.39 (SD=8.65) years. Initially, 4-5 dimensions were suspected. Using EFA based on ULS with an iterative process of poor item removal (i.e. low communalities, low loadings, or high loadings on multiple factors), 26 items were retained. The parallel analysis based on polychoric correlation matrix suggested retention of 3 factors (explaining 50.4% of shared variance). These were named as: 1) Birthday Blues, 2) Birthday Socialization, and 3) Wild Birthday Parties. The Birthday Blues factor scores were slightly (but not statistically significantly) higher in females: t(283)=1.84, p=.07, d=0.22. The Birthday Socialization scores were higher in females: t(283)=3.05, p=.002, d=0.36. The Wild Birthday Parties scores were higher in males: t(283)=-5.02, p<.001, d=0.59. Only the Wild Birthday Parties scores differed depending on the closeness to birthdays, in a way that they were lower for participants whose birthdays were in a ±30 day interval from the moment of testing: t(283)=2.53, p=.012, d=0.45. The Birthday Blues dimension correlated with depression (r=.38, p<.001), but the other two dimensions did not (r=.03, p=.59, and r=-.02, p=.74). Overall, the ‘Birthday Blues’ questionnaire shows promise, but its predictive value is yet to be determined.
Birthday blues, Depression, Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), Unweighted least squares (ULS)
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