Traducción y adaptación de la Escala de Depresión Reynolds para Niños en una muestra puertorriqueña

In this study was performed atranslation of the Reynolds Child Depression Scale -RCDS- (Reynolds, 1989), to count with a valid and reliable self-report instrument on the signs and symptoms of depression in children from 8-12 years. The study evaluated the internal and the concurrent validity with the Child Depression Inventory - CDI (Kovacs, 1983), in a clinical sample consisted of 43 participants of whom 60% were male between 8 and 13 years of age, from mainly public schools, receiving psychological or psychiatric treatment), consisted of 90 participants of whom 63% were females between 8 and 13 years of age, from a private school. The correlations coefficient between the RCDS and CDI was .70. The Alfa Coefficient for the RCDS and CDI was .87. The analysis suggested that although both instruments discriminate statistically between the clinical and community sample, the RCDS does not show clinical sensiitivity to detect depressive symptoms. The results support the use of the CDI because it appears to offer consistent and valid information on the constructs it aims to measure. It is important for future research to evaluate the psychometric and clinical properties of the translation of the RCDS, and determine if it is convenient to reevaluate the cutoff points for Puerto Rican children