Abstract
Purpose
Measurement invariance is necessary for meaningful group comparisons. The purpose of this study was to test measurement invariance of three patient-reported measures of depressive symptoms between neurologic and community samples.
Methods
The instruments tested included the center for epidemiologic studies depression scale (CESD-20), the patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the patient-reported outcome measurement information system depression short form (PROMIS-D-8). Responses from a community sample were compared to responses from samples with two neurologic conditions: multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate successive levels of measurement invariance: (a) configural invariance, i.e., equivalent item factor structure between groups; (b) metric invariance, i.e., equivalent unstandardized factor loadings between groups; and (c) scalar invariance, i.e., equivalent item intercepts between groups.
Results
Results of this study supported metric invariance for the CESD-20, PHQ-9, and PROMIS-D-8 scores between the community sample and the samples with neurologic conditions. The most rigorous form of invariance (i.e., scalar) also holds for the CESD-20 and the PROMIS-D-8.
Conclusions
The current study suggests that depressive symptoms as measured by three different outcome measures have the same meaning across clinical and community samples. Thus, the use of these measures for group comparisons is supported.
Abbreviations
- CESD:
-
Center for epidemiologic studies depression scale
- CFA:
-
Confirmatory factor analysis
- DIF:
-
Differential item functioning
- MG-CFA:
-
Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis
- MS:
-
Multiple sclerosis
- PHQ:
-
Patient health questionnaire
- PROMIS:
-
Patient-reported outcome measurement information system
- SCI:
-
Spinal cord injury
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Acknowledgments
Research reported in this paper was supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) under award number R03HS020700. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the AHRQ.
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Chung, H., Kim, J., Askew, R.L. et al. Assessing measurement invariance of three depression scales between neurologic samples and community samples. Qual Life Res 24, 1829–1834 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-015-0927-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-015-0927-5