Subscale

A subscale is a group of items within a larger assessment that measures one specific facet of the overall construct. For example, a multi-dimensional depression inventory might have subscales for somatic symptoms (sleep, appetite, fatigue), affective symptoms (sadness, anhedonia), and cognitive symptoms (worthlessness, hopelessness).

Subscales are typically validated separately and reported separately, since two people with the same overall score can have very different patterns across subscales — and that pattern is often more clinically meaningful than the total.