What Are We Measuring? An Evaluation of the CES-D across Race/Ethnicity and Immigrant Generation

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Citation

Perreira, Krista M.; Deeb-Sossa, Natalia; Harris, Kathleen Mullan; & Bollen, Kenneth A. (2005). What Are We Measuring? An Evaluation of the CES-D across Race/Ethnicity and Immigrant Generation. Social Forces, 83(4), 1567-1601.

Abstract

One of the key measurement instruments used to evaluate mental health is the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). The CES-D was developed in 1976 for use in general adult population (aged 18 or older). The CES-D has been used to assess depression risks in several populations (e.g., adolescent, elderly, ethnic, and clinical populations) for whom it was not originally designed. The usage of the CES-D to measure mental health outcomes for different racial, ethnic and generational groups (i.e. 1st generation, 2nd generation and 3rd generation) assumes that the CES-D is comparable across these groups. There are several reasons why we question this assumption.
First, the CES-D was originally designed to measure depression in a primarily European-American population with native English speaking abilities. These instruments have not been thoroughly validated for use in the multiethnic and foreign-born populations currently living in the U.S. (Flores 2002). Second, Radloff (1977) identified a four-factor solution in the CES-D for an adult European-American population. The four-factor solution needs to be evaluated in an adolescent population, and tested in the different racial, ethnic and generational groups in which this scale is been used. Third, the CES-D, as currently used does not distinguish causal from effect indicators. Treating variables as effect rather than causal indicators leads to model specification error, which, can bias parameter estimators and lead to incorrect assessments of the relationships between variables (Bollen and Ting, 2000).
To validate the use of the CES-D across different ethnic, racial and generational groups, test the dimensionality of the CES-D for these same groups, and compare causal and effect indicator models we used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sof.2005.0077

Reference Type

Journal Article

Year Published

2005

Journal Title

Social Forces

Author(s)

Perreira, Krista M.
Deeb-Sossa, Natalia
Harris, Kathleen Mullan
Bollen, Kenneth A.

ORCiD

Harris, KM - 0000-0001-9757-1026