Psychometric evaluation of a measure of Beck's negative cognitive triad for youth: applications for African-American and Caucasian adolescents.
A measure of Beck's negative cognitive triad, the Cognitive Triad for Children (CTI-C), was evaluated for its psychometric properties and utility with a community sample of 880 African-American and Caucasian adolescents. High-school students ranging from 14 to 17 years of age completed the CTI-C, the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire-Revised (CASQ-R) on two occasions 4 months apart. The CTI-C was found to be internally consistent, Cronbach's alpha=.90, to have acceptable test-retest reliability, r=.70, and concurrent validity as demonstrated by a significant correlation with the CASQ-R, r=.53. A principal factor analysis with promax rotation did not yield support for Beck's tripartite model of negative cognitions about the self, world, and future but rather yielded three factors with a combination of cognitions from all three domains. African American adolescents who reported more maladaptive cognitions on the CTI-C reported fewer depressive symptoms on the CDI 4 months later compared to their Caucasian counterparts, suggesting some limitation to using the CTI-C to predict depressive symptoms in African-American youth; however, Factor 1 derived from a factor analysis with the sample was more consistent in predicting future symptoms among both African-American and Caucasian adolescents. This factor consisted largely of positively worded items, offering some support for low positive affect as a predictor of depressive symptoms in adolescents.
Greening
Leilani
L
University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS 39216, USA. LGreening@psychiatry.umsmed.edu
Stoppelbein
Laura
L
Dhossche
Dirk
D
Martin
Wanda
W
D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D003710:Demography; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*