Agreement between self-report and clinician's assessment in depressed adolescents, using the example of BDI-II and CDRS-R

Abstract

Preceding studies demonstrated a high agreement between self-report and clinician's assessment of depression. The concordance on the level of sum scores, subscales, and single items, however, has yet to be investigated in a psychiatric adolescent sample. Also, the influence of additional variables such as age, sex, and IQ has been insufficiently studied in adolescents. Scores on the BDI-II and CDRS-R, assessed within 1 week, were collected from 105 adolescents (mean age = 15.94 years). Analyses of correlation were done on levels of sum scores, subscales, and single items. There was a high correlation between self-report and clinician's assessment (r = .67). At the level of subscales, items assessing somatic contents demonstrated no higher agreement than did items assessing cognitive and affective contents. The highest agreement at the symptom level was shown for the item assessing suicidal ideations. Additional variables had no significant influence on concordance. Adolescents with a high IQ and outpatient adolescents tended to overestimate their symptoms. The overall correlation was high and did not differ from results of comparable studies of correlations. The highest congruence was shown for the item assessing suicidal ideations, which underlines the accurate assessment of suicidality by clinicians as well. In summary, questionnaires can provide information about the existence of a depressive disorder, although one diagnostic instrument should not be replaced by the other despite a high correlation.