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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: Currently clinicians and researchers in Iran have to use translated western instruments to screen for anxiety and depressive disorders. Although, some western questionnaires translated and adapted for Iranian people have demonstrated suitable validity in Iranian context, considering the difference in the cultural values, it still remains unclear as to whether a realistic picture of this phenomenon in Iranian society has been drawn. Hence, for detecting and monitoring common emotional disorders in Iran, researchers need to reflect the way that young people experience and express this disorder in the Iranian culture.
Objectives: This study seeked to address these shortcomings by developing and validating an instrument to measure anxiety and depression among adolescents in Iran with the Tripartiate Model and cognitive content specificity theory serving as the conceptual basis for the instrument development.
Materials and Methods: The participants constituted of 579 students from secondary schools, who resided in the north of Iran during years 2011 and 2012. The instrument was developed and validated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (Phase II) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Phase III) to ensure its reliability and validity.
Results: The results provide evidence that the developed instrument achieved sound psychometric properties. The hypothesized two-factor model identified via EFA and CFA in the study consisted of 32 items, with 16 items belonging to anxiety and 16 items to depression. The overall reliability value of Cronbach's Alpha was 0.87. The CFA results showed acceptable goodness-of-fit indices for the revised model.
Conclusions: The anxiety and depression (A&D) inventory is a simple, brief, and easy to administer tool. Indeed, the entire 32-item A&D inventory takes no longer to complete than other symptom measures. Therefore, the A&D Inventory can provide differentiated symptoms between anxiety and depression in a very quick and efficient manner for Iranian adolescents.
Keywords: Anxiety; Depression; Development; Student; Validation
Copyright © 2016, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.
Language: en |