한국형 소아우울척도의 개발

Development o f the Korean form o f the Kovacs’ Children’ s Depression Inventory

While the previous literature on childhood depression is confusing and contains insufficient and insubstantial research data, recent studies do report that depression in childhood does exist, and the standardized evaluation of children is essential for clinical research. This study is conducted to develop the Korean form of the “Kovacs’ Children’ s Depression Inventory” and carries the following four main purposes 1) To test the reliability of the CDI by means of test-retest reliability, split-half reliability, item-total correlations and internal consistency. 2) To investigate the factor structure of depression among normal Korean children. 3) To examine the differences of response to self-report questionaire depending on age and sex. 4) To compare the severity of depression of Korean children with that of foreign children. The results are summarized as follows * 1) Two week test-retest(coefficient r=0.71, p<0.001)，mean of item-total correlations (coefficient r=0.44, p<0.00l) were acceptable, and CDI turned out to be an internally consistent instrument(coeffeicient r=0.88, p〈0.001). 2) Factor analysis using vari-max rotation yielded eight factors. 3) Among school-aged normal children (from 4th to 6th grade), the scores were not (or minimally) related to the respondent’ s age and sex. 4) The mean scores of CDI of Korean children were higher than those of the foreign children. These results indicate that firstly, “Korean form of the Kovacs’ Children’ s Depression Inventory is a reliable instrument, secondly, the structure of depression in Korean children is multidimensional, thirdly, this instrument may be used in different school-aged children, and lastly, the cut-off points to make a diagnosis of childhood depression may be different from those of foreign children. The authors suggest that future research should be directed to get normative data using various populations including clinic population, and concurrent use of “Children’ s Depression Rating Scale” of Lang and Tisher, “Children’ s Depression Rating Scale” of Poznanski or “School-age Depression Listed Inventory” of Petti and Law will further validate this instrument