title: Validity of the shortened Mood and Feelings Questionnaire in a community sample of children and adolescents: a preliminary research note.
abstract: The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) was designed to detect clinical depression in children and adolescents. Our aim was to investigate the relationship between symptom scores obtained using the short-version MFQ and psychiatric disorders in a non-clinical sample. Seventy-eight parents and 71 twins, who had completed the MFQ, were interviewed separately using a semistructured diagnostic interview, the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment. Parent-rated MFQ scores (MFQ-P) were found to distinguish those with ICD-10 (point biserial correlation = 0.345) and DSM-III-R depression (point biserial correlation = 0.369) from non-depressed cases. MFQ-P scores also differentiated depressed cases from those with 'other psychiatric diagnoses' (any anxiety disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder, hyperkinetic disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and adjustment disorder/post-traumatic disorder). The MFQ-P at the chosen cut-off point showed a sensitivity of 0.75 and specificity of 0.73 for an ICD-10 diagnosis of depression and a sensitivity of 0.86 and specificity of 0.87 for DSM-III-R depression. The number of self-rated reports (MFQ-C) was small, but overall the results suggest that self-rated MFQ scores may show less specificity. The MFQ-C at the selected cut-off point showed a sensitivity of 0.6 and specificity of 0.61 for ICD-10 depression, and a sensitivity of 0.75 and specificity of 0.74 for DSM-III-R depression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Manchester, Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, Pendlebury, UK.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thapar
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: McGuffin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology; D015897:Comorbidity; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012494:Sampling Studies