A brief questionnaire of DSM‐IV‐defined anxiety and depression symptoms among children

Abstract

Abstract The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (Chorpita, Yim, Moffitt, Umemoto, & Francis, 2000), a self‐report questionnaire for assessing symptoms of DSM‐defined anxiety disorders and major depression, in a large sample of school children ( N = 1748). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the structure of the RCADS was not fully in agreement with that reported by Chorpita et al. (2000). After removing conceptually inconsistent items, the questionnaire was reduced to 25 items representing five scales, namely, generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, and major depressive disorder. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that a correlated 5‐factor structure of the shortened version of the RCADS (i.e. the RCADS‐25) indeed provided a good fit for the data. Second, the psychometric properties of the RCADS‐25 were comparable to those obtained with the full‐length version. That is, the questionnaire was reliable in terms of internal consistency and test–retest stability, displayed reasonable parent–child agreement, and good convergent and divergent validity. Altogether, the RCADS and its shortened version, the RCADS‐25, seem to be useful questionnaires for clinical and research purposes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.