Discriminant validity of self-reported anxiety and depression in children:Generalizability to clinic-referred and ethnically diverse populations

In the present study, we investigated the relation of childhood anxiety and depression with 240 children (56% clinical referrals, 44% nonclinical refe rrals) ages 8 to 14 years. Participants were administered the State-Trait A nxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) and the Children's Depression Invento ry (CDI), two commonly used self-report measures of childhood anxiety and d epression. The principal focus of this study was to examine the discriminan t validity of these measures at the level of individual items through facto r analysis. Although high correlations were found between overall scores on the CDI and STAIC, factor analysis yielded distinct factors of anxiety and depression. Thus, with the inclusion of clinic-referred and ethnically div erse groups, the present study provided support for the generalizability of findings of similar research with non-clinic-referred primarily-Caucasian samples.