Análise psicométrica da Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale reduzida (RCADS-25)

Abstract

Introduction: The psychology is changing its focus and appropriating protocols with children and adolescents to prevent problems in mental health. Measuring instruments may indicate the effect of the protocols and serve as a benchmark to other studies. The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale in the long form (RCADS-47) has been widely used in international protocols and presents strong evidence of validity, maintaining its evaluation capacity through various cross-cultural researches. Recently, the scale was reduced and became more operative for the screening of symptoms related to Anxiety and Depression. Objective: Execute a psychometrics analysis of the RCADS-25. Methods: This study was conducted with school sample and took place in three stages: the first stage sought to verify whether the RCADS-47 had semantic validity with a sample of 40 students; the second stage applied extraction of items to format the RCADS-25; and the third stage was a pilot. At this stage, the criterion validity of the concurrent type, the construct validity of the convergent and the exploratory factor analysis with a sample of 100 students were investigated. Results: RCADS-25 showed good semantic capacity and excellent criterion validity and convergent validity. Exploratory factor analysis indicated the maintenance of factor structure, but acknowledged problems with some items. Conclusion: RCADS-25 showed good signs of validity, indicating equivalence with the original version. The internal consistency was .93 and the scale kept the structural model of two factors.