A Psychometric Analysis of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale—Parent Version in a Clinical Sample

摘要

The Revised Child Anxiety and DepressionScale—Parent Version (RCADS-P) is a 47-item parent-report questionnaire of youth anxiety and depression, withscales corresponding to the DSM-IV categories of SeparationAnxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, Generalized AnxietyDisorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, Obsessive-CompulsiveDisorder, and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). TheRCADS-P is currently the only parent-report questionnairethat concurrently assesses youth symptomatology of individ-ual anxiety disorders as well as depression in accordancewith DSM-IV nosology. The present study examined thepsychometric properties of the RCADS-P in a large (N=490), clinic-referred sample of youths. The RCADS-Pdemonstrated favorable psychometric properties, includinghigh internal consistency, convergent/divergent validity, as well as strong discriminant validity—evidencing an ability todiscriminate between anxiety and depressive disorders, aswell as between the targeted anxiety disorders. Support forthe DSM-related six-factor RCADS-P structure was alsoevidenced. This structure demonstrated superior fit to arecently suggested alternative to the DSM-IV classificationof anxiety and affective disorders—namely, the MDD/GAD"distress" factor.