Psychometric properties of the Turkish adaptation of the Children's Depression Rating Scale: revised in Turkish adolescents

Objective: Children Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R) is an instrument that is evaluated by a clinician and it needs bringing up the information from child/adolescent, parents and clinical assessment together. In clinical population, CDRS-R provides general information about depressive symptomatology and severity of depression also. The aim of this study was to translate and adapt of CDRS-R in Turkish and evaluate its psychometric properties in adolescence in Turkish population. Methods: Thirty-eight adolescents with major depressive disorders (MDD) and 38 healthy controls between 13 and 18 years old were recruited. Adolescents with at least some symptoms of depression were evaluated using the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS-PL)Present and Lifetime by a child psychiatrist. A child psychiatrist completed the Children Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R). The Clinical Global Impressions-Severity (CGI-S) and the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) were also rated. The participants were asked to complete the self-report inventories and Beck Depression Inventory. Ratings from all available CDRS-R scores were examined for both the study group and healthy controls. Results: Cronbach's alpha was found highly reliable. The interclass correlation coefficients ranged between 0.92 and 0.99 for each item, thus the inter-rater reliability was found statistically significant and highly correlated. We identified 16 factors whose eigenvalues were greater than one. The CDRS-R's items common variables were within the range of 0.45 to 0.87. The CDRS-R, CGI-S, and CGAS scores were compared with the CDRS-R raw score and they were found highly correlated. During evaluation of concurrent validity, BDI's sensitivity was 90.9%, and specificity 87.8%, and the positive and negative predictive values were 88% and 90%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for the CDRS-R were significantly high (100%). Conclusion: We found that Turkish version of the CDRS-R had reliability and validity for use in the diagnosis and rating of severity of major depressive disorders in Turkish children and adolescents.