Citation

Banh MK, Crane PK, Rhew I, Gudmundsen G, van der Stoep AV, Lyon A, McCauley E. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2012; 40(3): 353-367.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA, My.Banh@gmail.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10802-011-9569-4

PMID

21996979

Abstract

As research continues to document differences in the prevalence of mental health problems such as depression across racial/ethnic groups, the issue of measurement equivalence becomes increasingly important to address. The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) is a widely used screening tool for child and adolescent depression. This study applied a differential item functioning (DIF) framework to data from a sample of 6th and 8th grade students in the Seattle Public School District (N = 3,593) to investigate the measurement equivalence of the MFQ. Several items in the MFQ were found to have DIF, but this DIF was associated with negligible individual- or group-level impact. These results suggest that differences in MFQ scores across groups are unlikely to be caused by measurement non-equivalence.

Language: en