The Children’s Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R) (1996) is a clinician-rated scale for assessing childhood depression in ages 6 through 12. Interviews can be conducted with the child, parent, and teacher. The interview style is semi-structured, allowing room for the clinician to build rapport and trust with the child, parent, and/or teacher. Because of the multi-raters, the CDRS-R serves as a comprehensive tool in assessing depression. The manual provides the interviewer with guidance, and provides cases examples, sample responses, and detailed scoring procedure. The CDRS-R is usually used as an initial assessment.
Qualification Level: C. School psychologists may administer this assessment, but school counseling professionals should understand the use of this instrument.
Format and Administration
The CDRS-R is semi-structured interview based instrument and takes 15-20 minutes to administer. Clinical interviews can be conducted with the child, parents, and/or teacher, which allows for a comprehensive assessment. Seventeen symptom areas are assessed during the interview with a 5 or 7 point rating scale for each of the 17 domains. Each item is rated on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being least severe (no difficulties) to 7 indicating severe clinical difficulties.
The domains include: social withdrawal, sleep disturbance, excessive fatigue, suicide ideation etc., aligned with the DSM-IV criteria for childhood depression (Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2001). It has been said that the interview format is not as easy to administer as a paper-and-pencil format, and interviewers needed to be highly trained (Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2001).
Sample/Norm
The norm-comparative samples were comprised of a clinical sample and school (non-clinical) sample. The clinical sample consisted of 78 children who were enrolled in two mental health treatment hospitals in Chicago, Illinois, of which 77% met the criteria for depression; and the school sample consisted of 223 children from a Chicago, Illinois public school who did not meet the criteria for depression; 109 parents from the school sample were also interviewed. The average age of the children in both samples was not provided. The exact proportions of race/ethnicity were not recorded, but the samples were comprised of Caucasian, African American/Black, and Hispanic children. Children from Asian or Native-American heritage were not represented in either sample (Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2001).
Scoring and Interpretation
Raw scores for the ratings are converted to T-scores. T-scores are based on a comparison and combinations of child, parent, and teacher ratings. The T-score range provides interpretation and severity of depression.
Psychometric Properties
The psychometrics of the CDRS-R are strong. Interrater reliability was .92, with both clinicians familiar and unfamiliar with the CDRS-R assessment. Test-retest reliability after a 2-week period was .80. Validity was demonstrated with a correlation of .87 (Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2001). Convergent validity indicated the CDRS-R measured high in comparison to the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression.
Developmental Considerations
The nature of the interview format may pose as a potential issue. Children view adults as authority figures and the mere interview itself may cause psychological distress for the child and sway their responses. Children may be less likely to respond honestly in fear of looking “bad”, and may answer as they believe the adult would want them to, which creates a halo effect.
Cultural Considerations
The face-to-face interview may be uncomfortable for children from certain cultures where authority figures are highly respected. The interviewer would have to take race/ethnicity into account and be aware of body language, eye contact, and personal space values of the child. For English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, the interview process may be difficult as they need to understand the interviewer in spite of the language barrier.
The normed samples was rather small, and were not representative of the national population in regard to race, gender, SES, geographical locations etc., therefore careful consideration and caution should be practiced when evaluating children who are not representative of the CDRS-R samples.
Raw scores for the ratings are converted to T-scores. T-scores are based on a comparison and combinations of child, parent, and teacher ratings. The T-score range provides interpretation and severity of depression.
- T-score range 65-74 indicate a depressive disorder is “likely to be confirmed.”
- T-scores 75-84 indicate that a depressive disorder is “very likely.”
- T-score of 85 or higher indicates a depressive disorder is “almost certain” (Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2001).
Psychometric Properties
The psychometrics of the CDRS-R are strong. Interrater reliability was .92, with both clinicians familiar and unfamiliar with the CDRS-R assessment. Test-retest reliability after a 2-week period was .80. Validity was demonstrated with a correlation of .87 (Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2001). Convergent validity indicated the CDRS-R measured high in comparison to the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression.
Developmental Considerations
The nature of the interview format may pose as a potential issue. Children view adults as authority figures and the mere interview itself may cause psychological distress for the child and sway their responses. Children may be less likely to respond honestly in fear of looking “bad”, and may answer as they believe the adult would want them to, which creates a halo effect.
Cultural Considerations
The face-to-face interview may be uncomfortable for children from certain cultures where authority figures are highly respected. The interviewer would have to take race/ethnicity into account and be aware of body language, eye contact, and personal space values of the child. For English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, the interview process may be difficult as they need to understand the interviewer in spite of the language barrier.
The normed samples was rather small, and were not representative of the national population in regard to race, gender, SES, geographical locations etc., therefore careful consideration and caution should be practiced when evaluating children who are not representative of the CDRS-R samples.