Validation of the Kutcher Adolescent Depression Scale in a Caribbean student sample
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Research on depression among Caribbean children has been limited by a lack of valid and reliable measures. We addressed this problem by exploring the internal consistency reliability and the concurrent and discriminant validity of the Kutcher Adolescent Depression Rating Scale (KADS) among a wide cross-section of the student population attending elementary schools in Jamaica and Barbados. Methods: Students enrolled in grade 6 in a cross-section of schools in Jamaica and Barbados were invited to participate in the study. Schools included a balance of government-funded public schools and privately funded preparatory schools. All schools that were invited to participate accepted, and all grade 6 classrooms in each school were sampled. The following instruments were administered to the students during the fall semester of 2015: KADS, Adolescent Depression Rating Scale (ADRS), major depression disorder subscale of the Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS), and state and trait anxiety visual analogue scales. Results: In total, 759 children (376 girls [49.5%] and 363 boys [47.8%]; in 20 cases [2.6%], sex was missing) with a mean age of 10.7 (standard deviation 0.66) years (median 11.0 yr) took part in the study. Overall, the KADS had an acceptable degree of reliability (α = 0.76). The instrument had reasonably good concurrent validity, as evidenced by strong correlations with scores on the ADRS (r = 0.62) and the major depression disorder subscale of the RCADS (r = −0.61). It had acceptable discriminant validity, as shown through low correlations with the state and trait anxiety visual analogue scales (r = 0.21 and 0.18, respectively). This pattern of results suggests that a large part (37%) of the variance underlying the KADS assesses depression, and a smaller degree of the variance (3%–4%) measures a conceptually similar but distinct concept. Interpretation: The KADS is a reliable and valid measure for assessing depressive symptoms among Jamaican and Barbadian elementary school students. The sample may not be representative of all Caribbean children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".