MODELING CAUSAL RELATIONS BETWEEN ACADEMIC AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE AND DEPRESSION - A MULTITRAIT-MULTIMETHOD LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF CHILDREN

The authors obtained self-reports, peer nominations, teacher ratings, and parent reports of depression and social and academic competence on 490 3rd graders and 455 6th graders near the beginning and end of the school year. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation mod eling revealed that (a) measures showed significant convergent and dis criminant validity; (b) within-wave correlations between constructs we re large and significant, although the depression-social competence co rrelation was larger than the depression-academic competence correlati on; (c) the cross-wave stability of all constructs was remarkably high ; and (d) social competence at Wave 1 predicted depression at Wave 2 f or 6th graders after controlling for depression at Wave 1. Depression did not predict change in either academic or social competence over ti me. Implications for competence-based and failure-based models of chil d depression are discussed.