The Children's Depression Scale. A study of its validity.

The validity of the Children's Depression Scale and of its parent-report version were examined on a sample of normal and clinically referred adolescents. The CDS and CDS-A discriminated adequately between clinical and non-clinical Ss, as well as between depressed and non-depressed. Only the CDS discriminated between depressed and 'sad', i.e. parental report did not discriminate between these two groups. A high correlation was found between the CDS and the Children's Depression Inventory. Internal consistency of the scale was found to be adequate. However, no support was found for the subscale structure of the CDS as proposed by its authors.