In this study the psychometric properties of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) were evaluated and compared, using a relatively large elderly community sample. The GDS generally performed well, replicating earlier findings from a different population. Also, as hypothesized, the SDS, which has a multiple-choice format, had a higher non-completion rate than the GDS, which has a true-false format. Finally, no significant differences between the responses of young-old and old-old subjects were observed.