A Multi-Informant Approach to Measuring Depressive Symptoms in Clinical Assessments of Adolescent Social Anxiety Using the Beck Depression Inventory-II: Convergent, Incremental, and Criterion-Related Validity

Convergent, incremental, and criterion‐related validity of multi‐informant assessments of adolescents' fears of negative and positive evaluation

“…As part of this approach and to ensure comparability with scoring for the full version of the measure (i.e., possible score ranges from 0 to 63), responses for Items 9 and 21 were pro‐rated or estimated for each participant, based on their mean score for the 19 remaining items. Several studies support use of the BDI‐II to assess depressive symptoms among adolescents within the age range of our sample (e.g., Lipton et al, ; Osman, Barrios, Gutierrez, Williams, & Bailey, ; Rausch et al, ; Steer, Kumar, Ranieri, & Beck, ; Thomas et al, ; VanVoorhis & Blumentritt, ).…”

“…In our administration of the BDI‐II, we excluded Item 9, which assesses for suicidal thoughts and actions, and Item 21, which inquires about loss of interest in sex. Consistent with prior work (e.g., Lipton et al, ; Rausch et al, ; Thomas et al, ), we did not administer these two items given the mature nature of the item content and because parents in our studies often decline to consent to having their adolescents respond to items that assess these behaviours. Internal consistency estimates of the 19 items administered nonetheless demonstrated high internal consistency (Table ).…”

“…Our sample's demographic figures are consistent with economic and ethnic data for the geographic area of recruitment (U.S. Census Bureau, ). Further, our use of a demographically diverse sample to address aims regarding the psychometric properties of mental health assessments is in keeping with prior work and use of diverse samples to examine multimodal assessments of a host of domains including social anxiety (Beidel et al, ; Deros et al, ; Lipton et al, ; Thomas et al, ), depressive symptoms (e.g., De Los Reyes et al, ; Rausch et al, ), and family functioning (Augenstein et al, ; De Los Reyes, Salas, Menzer, & Daruwala, ).…”

“…Ethnic/racial demographic rates total above 100% because parents could select multiple response options. As in prior work (e.g., Augenstein et al, ; De Los Reyes et al, ; De Los Reyes, Augenstein, Aldao, et al, Deros et al, ; Rausch et al, ; Thomas et al, ), parents provided data about weekly family income using a survey that included response options on a 10‐point Likert‐type scale in $100 increments (e.g., $101–$200 per week). On this scale, parents reported that 29 of the families earned $500 or less per week, 23 earned between $501 and $900 per week, and 44 earned more than $901 in income per week (“$901 + per week” was the sample's modal response).…”

Strategies for Assessing and Modeling Depressive Symptoms in Longitudinal Studies of Adolescents

“…In lieu of being able to convert CDI sum scores to BDI‐II sum scores, researchers have obtained concordance through use of clinical classifications, where the depression symptoms’ scores (CDI T‐scores or BDI‐II total scores) are reduced to a binary coding using widely accepted clinical cut‐offs: depressed or not depressed (e.g., Mazur‐Mosiewicz et al., ; Rausch et al., ; Reilly et al., ). This binarization facilitates researchers’ comparison of individuals’ clinical depression status across two or more occasions (e.g., stayers or changers), but greatly reduces opportunity to study developmental change.…”