Extraction of depression scores in adolescents from a general-purpose behaviour checklist

Using a clinical sample of adolescents (n = 207), an attempt was made to find whether a multi-purpose, multi-informant instrument which measures a number of symptom domains, such as the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)/Youth Self-Report (YSR), could be used to extract Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) scores. Using item analysis procedures, a cluster of 15 items was selected from the YSR, which yielded a correlation of 0.74 with the CDI. The internalising scale of the YSR also correlated highly (0.73) with the CDI score. The corresponding CBCL items and scales showed poor capacity in predicting CDI scores.