Reasons for depression questionnaire (RFD-A): Determining psychometric properties with Indian adolescents

Pages: 986-989
Musaddiq Jahan (Department of Psychology, Womens College, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, UP)

The Reasons for Depression questionnaire (RFD) was originally developed by Addis and Carpenter (1999) to examine the explanations that people give for being depressed. They studied the samples of non depressed and depressed university students and other adults. They obtained an eight factor solution which was based on 48 items. Fitzgerald and Richardson (2002) evaluated the RFD data for New Zealand adolescents sample with addition of a ninth biological factor and confirmed the factor structure of original RFD. Fitzgerald and Richardson also prepared an abbreviated scale (RFD-A) using 35 items of the original 48 items with six factors which would be more appropriate for use with adolescents. The purpose of the present study was to determine the psychometric properties of RFD-A for Indian adolescents. The results of the study confirmed the appropriateness of six factors of RFD-A for Indian adolescents and found significant difference between depressed and non-depressed adolescents on different factors of the questionnaire.