Ten-Year Review of Rating Scales. III: Scales Assessing Suicidality, Cognitive Style, and Self-Esteem

• NCJ Number: 197221
• Journal: Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Volume: 41 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2002 Pages: 1150-1181
• Author(s): Nancy C. Winters M.D.; Kathleen Myers M.D.; Laura Proud B.A.
• Date Published: October 2002
• Length: 32 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research Paper
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This is the third article in a series of 10-year reviews of rating scales.

Annotation

This article reviews scales that are useful in tapping the affective disturbances experienced with various psychiatric disorders, including suicidality, cognitive style, and self-esteem.

Abstract

The paper samples articles incorporating these constructs over the past 25 years. It presents those that have adequate psychometric properties and high utility for efficiently elucidating youths' functioning, plus either wide literature citations or a special niche. Scales assessing suicidality have clear constructs, whereas scales of cognitive style demonstrate deficits in developmental relevance, and scales of self-esteem suffer from lax constructs. The constructs underlying these scales tap core symptoms of internalizing disorders, mediate the expression of affective disturbances associated with various disorders, and depict the impairments resulting from these disorders. The article considers that, overall, the psychometrics of these scales are adequate, and provide a broader representation of youths' functioning than that conveyed with diagnostic scales alone. Tables, references