title: Screening for depressive symptoms in adolescents at school: New validity evidences on the short form of the Reynolds Depression Scale.
abstract: The main purpose of the present study was to assess the depressive symptomatology and to gather new validity evidences of the Reynolds Depression Scale-Short form (RADS-SF) in a representative sample of youths. The sample consisted of 2914 adolescents with a mean age of 15.85 years (SD = 1.68). We calculated the descriptive statistics and internal consistency of the RADS-SF scores. Also, confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) at the item level and successive multigroup CFAs to test measurement invariance, were conducted. Latent mean differences across gender and educational level groups were estimated, and finally, we studied the sources of validity evidences with other external variables. The level of internal consistency of the RADS-SF Total score by means of Ordinal alpha was .89. Results from CFAs showed that the one-dimensional model displayed appropriate goodness of-fit indices with CFI value over .95, and RMSEA value under .08. In addition, the results support the strong measurement invariance of the RADS-SF scores across gender and age. When latent means were compared, statistically significant differences were found by gender and age. Females scored 0.347 over than males in Depression latent variable, whereas older adolescents scored 0.111 higher than the younger group. In addition, the RADS-SF score was associated with the RADS scores. The results suggest that the RADS-SF could be used as an efficient screening test to assess self-reported depressive symptoms in adolescents from the general population.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Sevilla, Spain.|Department of Educational Sciences, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ortuño-Sierra
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Sciences, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
authors.forename: Rebeca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Aritio-Solana
authors.affiliation: Navarre's Health System, Pamplona, Spain.
authors.forename: Félix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Inchausti
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Sciences, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
authors.forename: Edurne
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chocarro de Luis
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
authors.forename: Beatriz
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lucas Molina
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Sciences, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
authors.forename: Alicia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pérez de Albéniz
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Sciences, University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fonseca-Pedrero
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012494:Sampling Studies; D057566:Self Report; D012737:Sex Factors; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult