title: Development of a potential screening measure for adolescent depression.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Few adolescent-specific depression screening instruments have been developed in recent years using multi-method approaches (qualitative and quantitative), and some of those available have limitations with an adolescent audience. We describe the development of a potential measure - the Taouk Scale for Adolescent Depression.
  
  
  METHODS
  Draft items were informed by findings from focus groups and reviews by adolescents and healthcare professionals, resulting in a provisional 97-item scale. This was administered to a nation-wide sample of 3087 secondary students. Exploratory factor analysis was used in a development subset to examine dimensionality of items and reduce their number, with the final item set evaluated in a validation subset.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Four reliable factors - negative outlook, emotional distress, behavioural changes and cognitive and somatic disturbances - were obtained from the exploratory factor analysis, resulting in a 28-item instrument, which was corroborated by confirmatory factor analysis. The final scale includes a number of novel items not included in current measures, i.e., whether respondents wear more black clothing than usual, deliberately damage property, take more risks, 'space out' at school and are engaged in substance abuse and/or increased sexual activity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Taouk Scale for Adolescent Depression demonstrated sound psychometric properties and may have utility for future screening and future epidemiological purposes. It appears to be a valid and reliable screening instrument for adolescent depression that includes a number of novel items. Further research is necessary to confirm its criterion validity in clinically depressed samples.
authors.affiliation: 1 School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|2 Black Dog Institute, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Mona
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Taouk
authors.affiliation: 3 Lowy Cancer Research Centre, Prince of Wales Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Bettina
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Meiser
authors.affiliation: 1 School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|2 Black Dog Institute, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Dusan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hadzi-Pavlovic
authors.affiliation: 1 School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dudley
authors.affiliation: 1 School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.|2 Black Dog Institute, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Philip B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Mitchell
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Adolescent; depression; questionnaire; screening; self-report; test construction