Abstract: Objective To study depression symptom and t he reliability and validity of CES-D(Center for Epidemiologi2 cal Survey,Depression Scale)used in t he rural residents in Shandong province.Methods A sample of 341 country residents was evaluated by CES-D and Trait Anxiety Inventory(TAI)questionnaire.Results The prevalent rate of depression symptom among rural residents in Shandong province was 15.8%.The Cronbachαcoefficient of the CES-D was 0.8991.Guttman Split-half was 0.8875,and correlation coefficient of the two parts was 0.789.Cronbach α coefficient of CES-D was 0.8991,and Cronbach α coefficients of CES-D after each item deleted were ranged from 0.890 to 0.898.Pearson correlation coefficients between the total score of CES-D and that of its each item were ranged from 0.469 to 0.720.The correlation coefficient between the total score of the CES-D and that of TAI was 0.667(P<0.001).The factor analysis showed that three factors extracted form the CES-D scale could explain 51.97% of total variance.Conclusion The prevalent rate of depression symptom of rural residents in Shandong province was relatively high.CES-D has higher reliability and validity and its items are concise and convenient to operate in the rural population investigation.Therefore CES-D is worth being applied in the survey of depression in rural residents.