ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Screening depressivity among adolescents is a key public health priority. In order to measure the severity of depressive symptomatology, a four-dimensional 20 items scale called "Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale" (CES-D) was developed. A shorter 10-item version was developed and validated (Andresen et al.). For this brief version, several authors supported a two-factor structure - Negative and Positive affect - but the relationship between the two reversed-worded items of the Positive affect factor could be better accounted for by correlated errors. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is triple: firstly to test a French version of the CES-D10 among adolescents; secondly to test the relevance of a one-dimensional structure by considering error correlation for Positive affect items; finally to examine the extent to which this structural model is invariant across gender. METHOD: The sample was composed of 269 French middle school adolescents (139 girls and 130 boys, mean age: 13.8, SD=0.65). Confirmatory Factorial Analyses (CFA) using the LISREL 8.52 were conducted in order to assess the adjustment to the data of three factor models: a one-factor model, a two-factor model (Positive and Negative affect) and a one-factor model with specification of correlated errors between the two reverse-worded items. Then, multigroup analysis was conducted to test the scale invariance for girls and boys. RESULTS: Internal consistency of the CES-D10 was satisfying for the adolescent sample (α=0.75). The best fitting model is the one-factor model with correlated errors between the two items of the previous Positive affect factor (χ(2)/dl=2.50; GFI=0.939; CFI=0.894; RMSEA=0.076). This model presented a better statistical fit to the data than the one-factor model without error correlation: χ(2)(diff) (1)=22.14, p<0.001. Then, the one-factor model with correlated errors was analyzed across separate samples of girls and boys. The model explains the data somewhat better for boys than for girls. The model's overall χ(2)(68) without equality constraints from the multigroup analysis was 107.98. The χ(2)(89) statistic for the model with equality-constrained factor loadings was 121.31. The change in the overall Chi(2) is not statistically significant. This result implies that the model is, therefore, invariant across gender. The mean scores were higher for girls than boys: 9.69 versus 7.19; t(267)=4.13, p<0.001. CONCLUSIONS: To conclude, and waiting for further research using the French version of the CES-D10 for adolescents, it appears that this short scale is generally acceptable and can be a useful tool for both research and practice. The scale invariance across gender has been demonstrated but the invariance across age must be tested too.
Subject(s)
Cross-Cultural Comparison , Depressive Disorder/diagnosis , Personality Inventory/statistics & numerical data , Adolescent , Depressive Disorder/psychology , Female , France , Humans , Male , Mass Screening , Psychometrics/statistics & numerical data , Reproducibility of Results , Sex Factors , TranslatingABSTRACT
This article presents research on the health of adolescents who are in situations of either family or school detachment. Fourteen health indicators were used to investigate the physical, social and psychological well-being of adolescents. In addition, two separate scales were constructed to take into account family and school disengagement. As anticipated, the results prove that detachment from either family or school has a negative impact on health and this effect is amplified in cases of double detachment--both from family and school. The results also suggest an effect of contextual resilience since the school can play a protective role in for the health of adolescents who are in a situation of family disaffiliation. This research emphasises the need to analyse the risk and protective factors within a developmental and ecological theoretical framework to allow for the consideration of the dynamics involved between the different areas of life which are significant for an individual at a given moment in his development.
