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Assessing the measurement invariance of the RCADS-25 questionnaire across gender and child–parent dyads in the presence of multilevel data

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to assess the measurement invariance of the short version of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS-25) across male and female adolescents along with child self-reports and parent proxy-reports.

Methods

The sample consisted of 2039 adolescents and their parents from 51 public and private schools in Shiraz (southern Iran). The measurement invariance of the RCADS-25 was investigated by the multilevel multiple-indicators multiple-causes model. In addition, the reliability of the questionnaire was examined by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, and its validity was evaluated by exploratory and categorical confirmatory factor analysis.

Results

Although the RCADS-25 includes five (20%) non-invariant items across male and female adolescents, their impact is negligible at the scale level. In addition, 10 out of 25 items (40%) were non-invariant across self- and proxy-reports, which did not have substantial effect at the scale level.

Conclusion

Based on our findings, the instrument can be used, albeit with caution, for comparing depression and anxiety scores between male and female adolescents as well as child self-reports and parent proxy-reports.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Grant (Number 94-01-01-9208) from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences Research Council. The article was extracted from Mahsa Akbari’s Master of Science thesis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biostatistics, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

    Zahra Bagheri, Mahsa Akbari & Peyman Jafari

  2. Department of Allied Health Sciences, Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Tania B. Huedo-medina

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  1. Zahra Bagheri
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  2. Mahsa Akbari
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  3. Peyman Jafari
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  4. Tania B. Huedo-medina
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Correspondence to Peyman Jafari.

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The authors hereby declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the ethical and research committee of our institution, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and also with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Bagheri, Z., Akbari, M., Jafari, P. et al. Assessing the measurement invariance of the RCADS-25 questionnaire across gender and child–parent dyads in the presence of multilevel data. Qual Life Res 28, 829–840 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-018-2049-3

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