Abstract

Background: There are few tools specifically designed to assess adolescent Depression in China. Methods: Students (3,180) aged 11-17 years were approached through Multistage stratified cluster sampling method in 6 provinces and one municipality and evaluated using KADS-11CV and Children Depression Inventory (CDI). Students (435) whose CDI score was equal to or greater than 19 were included to be diagnosed by DSM-IV criteria for Depression. KADS-11CV and CDI were completed again by 73 students from Shanghai sample to analyze the test-retest reliability one month later. Results: The Cronbach’s α coefficient, spilt-half reliability coefficient and the test-retest Pearson’s r for the KADS-11CV was 0.84, 0.77 (P<0.01), 0.77 (P<0.01). The fitting index of the two-factor model is better than that of the one-factor model for the KADS-11CV; The correlation coefficient between scale scores of KADS-11CV and CDI is 0.74 (P<0.01); KADS-11 scores of those students identified with Depression were significantly higher than that of non-depressed group (P<0.001). The current study determined the optimal cut-off point of KADS-11CV is a total score ≥9, and at this cutoff, sensitivity and specificity were 89% and 90% respectively. Conclusion: The KADS-11CV is appropriate for use with Chinese adolescents because of its good reliability, validity and diagnostic accuracy, it can be used to assess depressive mood for adolescents.

Keywords: KADS-11; Reliability; Validity; Factor analysis; ROC analysis; Cut-off point