Validity and Reliability of the Thai Version of the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire

To evaluate the validity and reliability of a Thai version of the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ).

The present study included 23 children with depressive disorders (diagnosis made by child psychiatrists) and 74 children with no depressive disorders. All children and their parents were asked to complete the Thai versions of the SMFQ, Children's Depression Inventory, and Mood and Feelings Questionnaire. Criterion validity, convergent validity, reliability, and parent-child agreement of the SMFQ were measured.

With a cut-off score of 9, the child-rated SMFQ yielded a sensitivity of 87.0% and specificity of 86.5%, whereas the parent-rated SMFQ yielded a sensitivity of 82.6% and a specificity of 89.2%. The correlation coefficient between the child-rated and parent-rated versions was 0.75, and the correlation coefficients between the Thai Children's Depression Inventory and the child-rated and parent-rated versions were 0.86 and 0.74, respectively. Respectively for the child-rated and parent-rated versions, the Cronbach's alpha was 0.90 and 0.923, and the intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.61 and 0.75. The Bland-Altman plot showed that 92.9% and 85.7% of the child and parent test-retest answers were within limits of agreement.

The Thai version of SMFQ has a high degree of psychometric validity and reliability.