Measurement tools from which valid interpretations can be made are critical for assessing early emerging depressive symptoms, as depressive symptoms in childhood are associated with increased risk for early-onset depressive disorder, recurrence, suicidality, and other psychopathology. The Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children (DSRS) is a widely used self-report scale assessing youth depressive symptoms. The relatively few studies investigating the DSRS' latent structure have yielded mixed results, and measurement invariance (MI) based on sex and age has not been examined. We examined the factor structure and MI of the DSRS across sex and age in a community sample of 6-9-year-olds (N = 352; Mage = 7.57 years, SD = .70). Consistent with the largest prior structural study of the DSRS, a two-factor structure, with factors reflecting elevated negative affect (NA) and low positive affect (PA), showed strong model fit. Although this structure was consistent across sex and age (i.e., configural invariance), loadings of DSRS items varied across sex and age (i.e., metric noninvariance). Allowing the loadings of items contributing to noninvariance to vary across groups improved model fit. Implications for the clinical and research utility of the DSRS and suggestions for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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不同性别和年龄的儿童抑郁自评量表的潜在结构和测量不变性。


可以做出有效解释的测量工具对于评估早期出现的抑郁症状至关重要，因为儿童时期的抑郁症状与早发抑郁症、复发、自杀和其他精神病理学的风险增加有关。儿童抑郁自评量表（DSRS）是一种广泛使用的评估青少年抑郁症状的自我报告量表。调查 DSRS 潜在结构的研究相对较少，但得出的结果好坏参半，并且基于性别和年龄的测量不变性 (MI) 尚未得到检验。我们在 6-9 岁社区样本中检查了不同性别和年龄的 DSRS 的因子结构和 MI（N = 352；Mage = 7.57 岁，SD = 0.70）。与之前最大规模的 DSRS 结构研究一致，双因素结构（因素反映较高的负面情绪 (NA) 和较低的正面情绪 (PA)）显示出很强的模型拟合度。尽管这种结构在性别和年龄上是一致的（即配置不变性），但 DSRS 项目的负载在性别和年龄上有所不同（即度量非不变性）。允许有助于非不变性的项目负载在不同组之间变化，从而改善了模型拟合。讨论了 DSRS 对临床和研究效用的影响以及对未来研究的建议。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。