Validity of the Thai Version of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ)

Abstract

Objective : To evaluate known-group validity, criterion validity, convergent validity,
parent-child agreement, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the Thai version
of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ).
Methods : A Thai translation of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire was administered
to two groups : 23 children diagnosed with depressive disorder and 74 without
depressive disorder. Scores from both groups were used to measure sensitivity, specificity,
area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), cut off score, parent-child
agreement and correlation with Thai version of the Children’s Depression Inventory
scale (CDI), Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to measure internal consistency.
The Bland-Altman plot and the intraclass correlation coefficient were used to determine
the level of test-retest reliability.
Results : The MFQ successfully differentiated the group of children with depressive
disorder from the control group. In the child version, the AUC was 0.94 with the cut off
score of 23 or more yielding a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 93.2% The AUC
in the parent version was 0.93 , cut off score at 17 or more giving a sensitivity of 87%
and a specificity of 85.1%The Pearson’s correlation coefficient between the child and
parent version was 0.74, and the coefficients between the child and parent version
versus the Thai CDI were 0.87 and 0.76, respectively. In both the child and parent
version, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.95. The intraclass correlation coefficient
(ICC) was 0.71 in the child version and 0.85 in the parent version. The Bland-Altman
plot showed that 92.86% and 85.71 % of the child and parent test- retest answers were
within limits of agreement.
Summary : The Thai version MFQ has a high degree of psychometric validity and
reliability. Based on these results, the MFQ shows a lot of promise in both clinical and
research settings.