Relation between symptoms of anxiety and depression in children: a multitrait-multimethod-multigroup assessment

Teacher, parent, peer, and self-ratings of depression and anxiety symptoms were obtained from 280 3rd-grade and 211 6th-grade children. Confirmatory factor analysis of these multitrait-multimethod data for 3rd graders revealed low but statistically significant levels of convergent validity, high levels of method variance, and an extremely high correlation between the depression and anxiety factors, even after controlling for shared method variance. Similar analyses of 6th graders revealed slightly higher levels of convergent validity and a somewhat smaller correlation between the depression and anxiety factors. The data support a unified construct model for younger children and are consistent with either a dual factor or a tripartite model of depression and anxiety in older children.