Self- and parent-reported depressive symptoms rated by the mood and feelings questionnaire

Abstract

The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) was developed to measure depressive symptoms in children and adolescents. It includes a self-report and a parent-report part. This study set out to test the psychometric properties of the MFQ in a Danish population of children and adolescents.The study included a population-based sample of n = 992 individuals aged 9-17 years and n = 703 parents from five schools. The internal consistencies of both MFQ versions were excellent with high alpha coefficients. With few exceptions, correlation between items and the total score was moderate to high. Vegetative symptoms were among the lowest correlating items while cognitive symptoms were among the highest. Girls reported more depressive symptoms than boys, and reports from offspring indicated more depressive symptoms than reports from parents. There was no difference in depressive symptoms by respondents aged 9 to 11 compared to respondents aged 12 to 17 in schools where all pupils participated. However, in schools where pupils participated by choice, an increase in depressive symptoms by age was found. This study suggests that MFQ is reliable for evaluating depressive symptoms in a population of children and adolescents. Furthermore, it is of clinical relevance that parents tend to underreport depressive symptoms of their offspring.

Screening efficiency of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) and Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ) in Swedish help seeking outpatients

“…Subgrouping of MFQ-patient levels across age and gender have been reported with girls scoring higher than boys but no difference across age [26,34] while our clinical sample as expected had higher levels but also an age difference with adolescents scoring higher than Table 3. Psychometric properties at cut-offs to either prioritize sensitivity, specificity or best separation on the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ) for the prediction of depression in adolescents.…”

Examining parent and child agreement in the diagnosis of adolescent depression

“…Research which has specifically addressed the difference between parent and child self-report of depression has consistently found that parents report lower levels of depression symptoms than their child's report in both community (Eg, Bilenberg, Costello, & Wesselhoeft, 2018) and clinical populations (Orchard, Pass, Marshall, & Reynolds, 2017). Furthermore, Orchard et al (2017) also identified that there was no significant pairwise correlation between parent and adolescent reports of symptom severity.…”

The Back2School modular cognitive behavioral intervention for youths with problematic school absenteeism: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

“…Studies show that the MFQ validly identifies children presenting with major depressive episodes, especially when the MFQ and the MFQ-P are used in combination. The Danish version of the MFQ has shown good psychometric properties [35].…”