Psychological Measure: Childrens Depression Inventory - Essay Example

Psychological Measure Paper: Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) al Affiliation Psychological Measure Paper: Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) The Children’s Depression Inventory or CDI is a type of psychological measure that evaluates the intensity of any manifestation or signs associated with depression in children or early teens. The psychometric instrument is comprised of a self-rated 27 items scale. Further, all of the 27 scales in the measurement are arranged into five principal factors. The subjects of the CDI can evaluate themselves contingent on how they perceive and feel, with each variable being classified with a rating ranging from zero (0) to two (2). Originally developed as based on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the CDI was first created during 1979 by American psychologist Maria Kovacs. This measurement is renowned to be great in terms of validity and reliability in which a multitude of varying procedures and excellent psychometric features can be utilised. This paper will examine the CDI by analysing literatures that puts into use the said instrument and discuss its implications in terms of its usage, context, interpretation, and ethical considerations. Children’s Depression Inventory in Application A study conducted by Rivera, Bernal, and Rossello (2005) emphasizes on a quasi-experimental research that assess the effectiveness of both the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and The Children Depression Inventory (CDI) to indicate the levels of Major Depressive Disorder or MDD to their Puerto Rican adolescent respondents. Accordingly, the study garnered a total of 130 participants with age range from 13 to 18 years old. The instrument was translated into Spanish and each item in the instrument is rated based on the presence of the symptoms with zero as having the symptom absent, one with the average symptom, and two with the severe symptom. Moreover, the diagnosis was administered by future PhDs in clinical psychology by using the DSM-IV to check for any symptoms present from the participants. Subsequently, data analysis was conducted after MDD identification and data are categorized as either ‘true positives’, ‘true negatives’, ‘false positives’, and ‘false negatives’. After that, information scores based on specificity, sensitivity, positive and negative predictive power are determined. From this point, test efficiency indicators for CDI are measured depending on a certain cut-off mark The results of the study implicated that for a respondent to be identified with MDD, the CDI value should be at least 20, 0.43 specificity, 0.64 positive predictive rate, sensibility ratio of 0.69, and 0.49 negative predictive value. Also, the study concluded that both the CDI and BDI are somehow decent psychological measures which can be administered to analyze patients with the illness MDD as based from the results from their Puerto Rican respondents. Particularly, the differences in values obtained from the CDI indicate that people diagnosed with the said disorder can vary depending on the kind of population it is prevalent. On the other hand, another study that uses the CDI as a psychological measurement was the study conducted by Aluja and Blanch (2002). In this study, the researchers used the instrument to predict social and academic capabilities. Additionally, it focuses on the association in terms of various CDI variables, overall intelligence, and academic performance. From the sample of 678 students, the results show that the CDI is negatively associated with scholastic performance. Specifically, the third factor of the CDI which is incompetence or maladjustment defines poor academic achievement. Essentially, the primary use of the CDI is to measure the depression levels of students which was considered to be a major contributor of low academic achievement. Through the use of some CDI factors, exploratory factorial techniques are possible to explore facets of depression such as cognitive and behavioral aspects and its further associations with any psychological issues. Hence, this can be proven very beneficial in both research and clinical settings, since the usage of CDI proves that depression can be multidimensional, that is, it can be affected by various factors such as gender, age, or individual differences. Discussion As based on the summary and analysis of the articles presented earlier, the Child Depression Inventory basically is a symptom-oriented measure for indicating manifestations of depression from young toddlers to adolescents. Typically, depression is hard to detect from young children and is oftentimes regarded as an adult illness, but as what is explored from related literatures, depression can be manifested in young people too, and can impact the way they function either at home or at school settings. As due to the robustness of research results from recent studies, it is identified that the new generation of children and youngsters experience earlier stages of depression in comparison to previous generations and is more probable to experience recurrences. The sample studies sited provided a onetime administration of the CDI. However, the CDI can be implemented multiple times depending on how much a professional wanted to quantify changes in the depression levels in a specific time frame and to assess the effectiveness of results from depressive illnesses. The individuals qualified for the administration of the CDI are usually, clinical psychologist, psychometricians, psychiatrist, and researchers who focus on the field of studying depression and has a reliable background in implementing the said instrument. Parents, nurses, school teachers, and other people do not have the enough knowledge to evaluate the outcomes of the CDI. Since depressive symptoms somehow change in children, this research suggests on retesting youngsters who obtained a positive result on the CDI with an interval of 2-4 weeks on the pre and post-test. Furthermore, a person who has been identified having a positive CDI results needs to seek a inclusive diagnostic assessment by an authorized mental health practitioner or a clinical psychiatrist. Personal interviews with the child needs to be included in the assessment as well as the caregivers, parents, and other related people who takes a direct observation of the child’s behavior. Ethical Implications As based on the literatures shared, CDI is a self-rated instrument, that is, the client being assessed records their response on the test questionnaires provided separate from the interviews that will also be analyzed by the administrator. The CDI can be proven a quite effective tool in analyzing depression in young people. However, it also shares some disadvantages with different self-report scales applied on children and adolescents, specifically that children have varying levels of intelligence and capability as adults to alter their responses on the CDI and related measures to indicate what they think are the probable answers instead on focusing on their actual experiences and feelings. This does not even include those children who are still not on the right age and still not quite capable of reading to generate a valid and reliable diagnosis of their CDI results. Also, for the sake of ethical considerations, using the CDI should only be strictly implemented by licensed or trained professionals to evaluate the results of the test. One identifiable ethical concern for this type of test is not just centered on its methodological issues such as having only fair reliability in assessing depression, but also if it is implemented on nonclinical settings. Results from the studies of researchers will most likely depend on their experience, awareness of the issues, and their ethical standards as well when studying a specific community. Conclusion Despite the good credits that the CDI is getting from several literatures as a decent measurement for distinguishing symptoms of depression in young people, its reputation is still continually debated in other sources such as in terms of specificity and sensitivity. The two studies that utilized CDI as a primary instrument for assessing depression only show that the instrument can be somehow a reliable tool for exploring any depressive symptoms of a child. However, several factors and considerations needs to be put into perspective when using this kind of instruments as there is no absolute truth and zero errors when conducting these kinds of tests. References Aluja, A., & Blanch, A. (2002). The Children Depression Inventory as Predictor of Social and Scholastic Competence. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 18(3), 259-274. Rivera, C.L., Bernal, G., & Rossello, J. (2005). The Children Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI): Their validity as screening measures for major depression in a group of Puerto Rican adolescents. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 5(3), 485-498. Read More