Psychometric properties of the Escala de Autoeficacia para la Depresión en Adolescentes (EADA) among Latino youth with type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) adolescents have higher depression rates than controls. Self-efficacy has been proposed as a mediator of therapeutic changes. Few scales assess emotional self-efficacy in adolescents. None have been validated with T1D youth. We examined the psychometric properties of the Escala de Autoeficacia para la Depresión en Adolescentes (EADA) with 51 T1D youth (aged 12-17 years), enrolled in a depression treatment study. Adolescents and one parent each completed several measures. Youth completed the EADA. We used alpha coefficient to estimate its internal consistency and Pearson correlation to assess its concurrent and construct validity. We found an internal consistency of 0.93 for the EADA total score, with alpha values ranging from 0.71 to 0.85 for its subscales. EADA scores significantly (p ≤ 0.05) diverged from self-reports of depression, hopelessness/helplessness, suicidal ideation, self-esteem/guilt problems, depression-related cognitive alterations, hypoglycemic symptoms, and problems in quality of life. Its scores converged with youth's life satisfaction, self-efficacy for diabetes, self-care behaviors, and perceptions about the quality of group therapy climate and family social support. Our findings document EADA's reliability and validity when used with T1D youth and extend the supporting evidence on its psychometric properties to a clinical sample of Latino adolescents.