RELIABILITY AND FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE CES-D IN A SAMPLE OF MEXICAN ADOLESCENTS

The present paper includes results from factor analysis and Alpha Coefficients from the CES-D questionnaire. This scale was given to 873 junior high and high school students of two Mexico City districts Findings also include a brief report about depressive symptomatology level of the sample. The CES-D is a self-report scale developed for epidemiological surveys measuring depressive symptomatology. The applied analysis to the CES-D in students indicates that the scale has a high reliability level and a well defined factor structure indicating the existence of three subscales: Negative Affect, Somatic Symptoms and Positive Affect. The present survey establishes a new cut-off point for the scale based on the mean (17.8) and the standard deviation (9.1) obtained from the sample. Considering a new cut-off point of 27, 15.4% of adolescent students from these schools were classified as depressed.