Depression and its Relationship to Children of Divorced and Intact Families

The purpose of the study was to gain information about the effects of divorce on school-aged children. Subjects in the study consisted of thirty-seven children from intact homes and thirty-seven children from divorced homes for a total of seventy-four subjects. The independent variables for the study were the home status of the child (divorced versus intact), gender (male versus female), and grade-level (third grade versus sixth grade). The dependent variable was the subjects’ scores on the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) developed by Maria Kovacs. The results of the study were analyzed using a two by two by two analysis of variance. The results showed that there was not a significant discrepancy in levels of depression between children from intact and divorced homes. A significant discrepancy between boys and girls and their level of depression on the CDI was not found. A 2 way interaction did reveal, however, that third grade boys and sixth grade girls showed higher levels of depression than their counterparts