Structure factorielle et qualités psychométriques du questionnaire d’auto-évaluation pour adolescents (Youth Self-Report) d’Achenbach et Rescorla

Introduction

Recent research on the prognostic significance of subthreshold comorbid disorders highlighted the need for instruments allowing for the comprehensive exploration of symptomatology of adolescents.

Objective

To verify the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Achenbach and Rescorla's Youth Self-Report French translation, which allows this investigation.

Method

We had 1450 adolescents 11–17- year old (747 girls) complete the YSR in secondary schools in the Paris metropolitan area.

Results

Confirmatory Factor Analyses and Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling supported the 8-syndrome structure. However, since ESEM allows cross-loadings, the number of indicators for each factor in the ESEM models is much higher than in the CFA models. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were satisfactory, and multigroup analyses confirmed the metric and scalar invariance across age and gender of most of the items examined (70 out of 89). We can therefore affirm that girls score lower on Social problems than boys, 15–17-year-old adolescent score higher on Thought problems, Attention problems, and Rule-Breaking Behavior than the younger, and these differences are substantive and independent of differential item functioning.

Conclusion

These results are likely to encourage the use of YSR in research and clinical practice with French-speaking adolescents.