Do we understand our daughters' depression and anxiety? A bifactor modeling approach

Background: Depression and anxiety are common in adolescence, but adolescents’ reports of their symptoms are often at odds with their parents’ report. The extent to which reporting difference is a function of gender and context (i.e., clinical or community) has yet to be established. Since discrepancies have been found to be predictive of poor long-term health outcomes, it is critical to determine the extent of the problem in a community sample, and that disagreement itself be measured with the upmost precision. Methods: Lifetime symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety and social anxiety were modeled with a bifactor structure, and various quality assessments were performed. Adolescent and caregiver reports of the adolescent’s symptoms came from the GOASSESS on the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (4,812 adolescent-caregiver pairs; adolescents aged 11-17 years; 52.2% female; 57.1% White, 31.7% Black). Results: Controlling for lifetime internalizing severity, females still endorse crying more frequently than males, which indicates item bias (Chi^2=134.13, pBon