[A critical review of Italian Children's Depression Scale]

In the present paper we investigate the factor structure of the Italian version of the Children's Depression Scales (CDS).

We analyzed the responses at the questionnaires of 592 subjects (9-16 years old) and we studied three factor structures previous considered in literature. As a first step, we replicated an exploratory factor analyses and, then, a two and three-factor solutions analyzed by a confirmatory factorial analysis. Finally, we modified the models introducing the parameter estimation of correlation between errors when paired item were present (e.g., two similar item but one referred to mother and the other one to father). Results showed the two-factor model interpretation has to be preferred when we administer the CDS Italian version; indeed there are important differences in the factor structure between the Italian and the original English version.

Findings should be considered for further studies on the factor structure of the CDS. Finally, it seems to us not easy to consider these results entirely coherent with Lang & Tisher theory both for how they define the latent trait (i.e., depression), and how they measure it using the CDS.