Item response theory (IRT) and categorical data factor analysis (CDFA) are complementary methods for the analysis of the psychometric properties of psychiatric measures that purport to measure latent constructs. These methods have been applied to relatively few child and adolescent measures. We provide the first combined IRT and CDFA analysis of a clinical measure (the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire—SMFQ) in a community sample of 7-through 11-year-old children. Both latent variable models supported the internal construct validity of a single underlying continuum of severity of depressive symptoms. SMFQ items discriminated well at the more severe end of the depressive latent trait. Item performance was not affected by age, although age correlated significantly with latent SMFQ scores suggesting that symptom severity increased within the age period of 7–11. These results extend existing psychometric studies of the SMFQ and confirm its scaling properties as a potential dimensional measure of symptom severity of childhood depression in community samples.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Albanese, M. T., & Knott, M. (1990). Twomiss: A computer program for fitting a one- or two- factor logit-probit latent variable model to binary data when observations may be missing. London, UK: London School of Economics and Political Sciences.
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental Disorders—Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Washington: American Psychiatric Association.
Angold, A., Costello, E. J., Messer, S. C., Pickles, A., Winder, F., & Silver, D. (1995). Development of a short questionnaire for use in epidemiological studies of depression in children and adolescents. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 5, 237–249.
Angold, A., Costello, E. J., Pickles, A., & Winder, F. (1987). The development of a questionnaire for use in epidemiological studies of depression in children and adolescents. London: Medical Research Council Child Psychiatry Unit.
Angold, A., Erkanli, A., Silberg, J., Eaves, L., & Costello, E. J. (2002). Depression scale scores in 8–17-year-olds: Effects of age and gender. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 1052–1063.
Baker, F. (2001). The basics of item response theory (2nd ed.). ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation. Retrieved from http://edres.org/irt/
Bartholomew, D. J., Steele, F., Moustaki, I., & Gabraith, J. (2002). The analysis and interpretation of multivariate data for social scientists. London: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
Cheong, Y. F., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2000). Measurement and structural models for children's problem behaviors. Psychological Methods, 5, 477–495.
Cooke, D. J., & Michie, C. (1997). An item response theory analysis of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. Psychological Assessment, 9, 3–14.
Costello, E. J., & Angold, A. (1988). Scales to assess child and adolescent depression: Checklists, screens and nets. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 27, 726–737.
Costello, E. J., Angold, A., Burns, B. J., Erkanli, A., Stangl, D. K., & Tweed, D. L. (1996a). The great smoky mountains study of youth: Functional impairment and serious emotional disturbance. Archives of General Psychiatry, 53, 1137–1143.
Costello, E. J., Angold, A., Burns, B. J., Stangl, D. K., Tweed, D. L., Erkanli, A., et al. (1996b). The great smoky mountains study of youth: Goals, design, methods, and the prevalence of DSM-III-R disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 53, 1129–1136.
Duncan Jones, P., Grayson, D. A., & Moran, P. A. (1986). The utility of latent trait models in psychiatric epidemiology. Psychological Medicine, 16, 391–405.
Embretson, S. E., & Reise, S. P. (2000). Item response theory for psychologists. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Flora, D. B., & Curran, P. J. (2004). An empirical evaluation of alternative methods of estimation for confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data. Psychological Methods, 9, 466–491.
Gallo, J. J., Anthony, J. C., & Muthén, B. O. (1994). Age differences in the symptoms of depression: A latent trait analysis. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 49, 251–264.
Gardner, W., Shear, K., Kelleher, K. J., Pajer, K. A., Mammen, O., Buysse, D., et al. (2004). Computerized adaptive measurement of depression: A simulation study. BMC Psychiatry, 4, 13.
Goodman, R. (1997). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581–586.
Goodman, R. (2001). Psychometric properties of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 40, 1337–1345.
Goodman, R., Ford, T., Simmons, H., Gatward, R., & Meltzer, H. (2000). Using the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) to screen for child psychiatric disorders in a community sample. British Journal of Psychiatry, 177, 534–539.
Goodyer, I. M., Herbert, J., Tamplin, A., & Altham, P. M. (2000). First-episode major depression in adolescents: Affective, cognitive and endocrine characteristics of risk status and predictors of onset. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176, 142–149.
Goodyer, I. M., & Sharp, C. (2005). Childhood depression. In B. Hopkins, R. G. Barr, G. F. Michel, & P. Rochat (Eds.), The cambridge encyclopedia of child development (pp. 420–423). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hankin, B. L., Abramson, L. Y., Moffitt, T. E., Silva, P. A., McGee, R., & Angell, K. E. (1998). Development of depression from preadolescence to young adulthood: Emerging gender differences in a 10-year longitudinal study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 107, 128–140.
Kent, L., Vostanis, P., & Feehan, C. (1997). Detection of major and minor depression in children and adolescents: Evaluation of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 565–573.
Lambert, M. C., Schmitt, N., Samms-Vaughan, M. E., An, J. S., Fairclough, M., & Nutter, C. A. (2003). Is it prudent to administer all items for each Child Behavior Checklist cross-informant syndrome? Evaluating the psychometric properties of the youth self-report dimensions with confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory. Psychological Assessment, 15, 550–568.
Lord, F. M. (1980). Applications of item response theory to practical testing problems. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lord, F. M., & Novick, M. R. (Eds.). (1968). Statistical theories of mental test scores. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
McDonald, R. P. (1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Mahwah, NJ: LEA.
Messer, S. C., Angold, A., Costello, E. J., Loeber, R., Van Kammen, W., & Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1995). Development of a short questionnaire for use in epidemiological studies of depression in children and adolescents: Factor composition and structure across development. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 5, 251–262.
Muthén, B. (1984). A general structural equation model with dichotomous, ordered categorical, and continuous latent variable indicators. Psychometrika, 49, 115–132.
Muthén, B. (1989). Multiple-group structural modelling with non-normal continuous variables. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 42, 55–62.
Office of National Statistics. (2001). Retrieved from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
Park, R. J., Goodyer, I. M., & Teasdale, J. D. (2002). Categoric overgeneral autobiographical memory in adolescents with major depressive disorder. Psychological Medicine, 32, 267–276.
Patton, G. C., Carlin, J. B., Shao, Q., Hibbert, M. E., & Bowes, G. (1997). Adolescent dieting: Healthy weight control or borderline eating disorder? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 299–306.
Rouse, S. V., Finger, M. S., & Butcher, J. N. (1999). Advances in clinical personality measurement: An item response theory analysis of the MMPI-2 PSY-5 scales. Journal of Personality Assessment, 72, 282–307.
Santor, D. A., Ramsay, J. O., & Zuroff, D. C. (1994). Nonparametric item analyses of the Beck Depression Inventory: Evaluating gender item bias and response option weights. Psychological Assessment, 6, 255–270.
Sattler, J. M. (1988). Assessment of children. San Diego, CA: Sattler.
Shrout, P. E., & Parides, M. (1992). Conventional factor analysis as an approximation to latent trait models for dichotomous data. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 2, 55–65.
Takane, Y., & de Leeuw, J. (1987). On the relationship between item response theory and factor analysis of discretized variables. Psychometrika, 52, 393–408.
Thapar, A., & McGuffin, P. (1998). Validity of the shortened Mood and Feelings Questionnaire in a community sample of children and adolescents: A preliminary research note. Psychiatry Research, 81, 259–268.
van der Linden, W. J., & Hambleton, R. K. (1997). Handbook of modern item response theory. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Waller, N. G., Tellegen, A., McDonald, R. P., & Lykken, D. T. (1996). Exploring nonlinear models in personality assessment: Development and preliminary validation of a negative emotionality scale. Journal of Personality, 64, 545–576.
Wechsler, D. (1992). Wechsler intelligence scale for children (3rd UK ed.). London: Psychological Corporation.
Weiss, B., & Garber, J. (2003). Developmental differences in the phenomenology of depression. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 403–430.
Wood, A., Kroll, L., Moore, A., & Harrington, R. (1995). Properties of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire in adolescent psychiatric outpatients: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36, 327–334.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful to all the families and schools who participated. We also wish to thank Sarah Moore, Heather Brown, Penny Hazell and Maria Loades for helping with data collection and entry, and Dr. Melanie Merricks and Dr. Carol Stott for valuable discussion. Carla Sharp was supported by an NHS Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Cambridge, UK. Tim Croudace was supported by a Dept of Health Career Scientist Award (Public Health).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sharp, C., Goodyer, I.M. & Croudace, T.J. The Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ): A Unidimensional Item Response Theory and Categorical Data Factor Analysis of Self-Report Ratings from a Community Sample of 7-through 11-Year-Old Children. J Abnorm Child Psychol 34, 365–377 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-006-9027-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-006-9027-x