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. 2018 Jul 18:9:1225.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01225. eCollection 2018.

Development and Validation of an Item Bank for Depression Screening in the Chinese Population Using Computer Adaptive Testing: A Simulation Study

Qingrong Tan  1 , Yan Cai  1 , Qiuyun Li  1 , Yong Zhang  1 , Dongbo Tu  1
Affiliations

Development and Validation of an Item Bank for Depression Screening in the Chinese Population Using Computer Adaptive Testing: A Simulation Study

Qingrong Tan et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

With the increasing prevalence of depression, creating a simple and precise tool for measuring depression is becoming more important. This study developed a computer adaptive testing for depression (CAT-Depression) from a Chinese sample. The depression item bank was constructed from a sample of 1,135 participants with or without depression using the Graded Response Model (GRM; Samejima, 1969). The final depression item bank with strict unidimensionality comprised 68 items, which had local independence, good item-fit, high discrimination, no differential item functioning (DIF), and each item measured at least one symptom of diagnostic criteria for depression in ICD-10. In addition, the mean IRT discrimination of the item bank reached 1.784, which clearly showed that the item bank of CAT-Depression was high-quality. Moreover, a simulation CAT study with real response data was conducted to investigate the characteristics, marginal reliability, criterion-related validity, and predictive utility (sensitivity and specificity) of CAT-Depression. The results revealed that the proposed CAT-Depression had acceptable and reasonable marginal reliability, criterion-related validity, and sensitivity and specificity.

Keywords: IRT models; computerized adaptive testing; depression assessment; item response theory; measurement.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of selected items and test information curve under different stopping rules.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Reliability as a function of the theta under several stopping rules.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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