Structure, Reliability, Measurement Stability, and Construct Validity of the Polish Version of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale

Abstract

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) is a self-report questionnaire that aims to assess symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders in children. Two studies were conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the RCADS. Study 1 was conducted to analyze the structural validity and reliability of the RCADS scores and Study 2 assessed the longitudinal measurement of stability over time. Data were collected from a community sample of 501 children and adolescents aged 8 to 14 years in Poland. The original 47-item version of the Polish RCADS was compared with two shortened versions: 30- and 20-item versions. Overall results revealed support for the structural and construct validity, reliability, and stability of the Polish version of the RCADS.

Psychometric Evaluation of Two Short Versions of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale

“…This hypothesis was tested by multilevel linear regression analyses, adjusted for school and class by the use of a random intercepts and random slope model. Mean differences were expected of at least one point on the anxiety scale [12], one point on the MDD-10 scale [12,14], and 0.5 point on the MDD-5 scale [13].…”

“…The RCADS-25 [12] is a short self-report questionnaire for children and adolescents age 8 to 18 years that measures broad anxiety through 15 items and MDD through ten items in accordance with the DSM-IV descriptions of anxiety disorders and MDD. All 15 anxiety items and five out of ten MDD items were used to examine the psychometric properties of the RCADS-20 [13]. Items are scored on a fourpoint Likert scale: 0 (never), 1 (sometimes), 2 (often), and 3 (always), resulting in a range of total scores from 0 -45 for the broad anxiety scale, from 0 -30 for the RCADS-25 MDD scale with ten items (MDD-10), and from 0 -15 for the RCADS-20 MDD scale with five items (MDD-5); higher total scores indicate a more severe level of anxiety or MDD.…”

“…For one thing, the RCADS is freely available, in contrast to questionnaires like the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders-Dutch version (SCARED-NL) or the Children's Depression Inventory-second version (CDI-2) [11]. In addition, the RCADS measures both anxiety and depression, and the original RCADS of 47 items has been shortened to versions with 25 items (i.e., [12] and 20 items (i.e., RCADS-20) [13]. By way of comparison, the SCARED-NL only measures anxiety with 69 items, and the CDI-2 only measures a depressive syndrome with 28 items, which are 97 items in total.…”

“…The RCADS-20 has also demonstrated promising psychometric properties in previous research. In the RCADS-20, the broad anxiety scale of the RCADS-25 was left unchanged, but the number of MDD items were reduced by half (five items remaining) in conformance with the MDD scale of the Spanish RCADS-30 [13,16]. MDD scale reduction was based on ranked item loadings, corrected item-total correlations, and content validity [16].…”

“…MDD scale reduction was based on ranked item loadings, corrected item-total correlations, and content validity [16]. Previous research has indicated the existence of a general broad anxiety factor and a separate MDD factor with five items (CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.05) in a general sample [13]. The MDD scale with five items showed a sufficient reliability (alpha = 0.72) and convergent validity compared to the CDI (r = 0.6) in a school-based sample [16].…”