Graduate Program

School Psychology

Degree Name

Specialist in School Psychology

Semester of Degree Completion

1998

Thesis Director

J. Michael Havey

Abstract

The problem that was investigated in the current study was that the norms of the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS) (Reynolds, 1987) may have had limited generalizability to students attending Paris High School and Mayo Middle School in rural Paris, Illinois because it was normed on "normal" subjects in only one urban/suburban school district in Wisconsin. The purposes of the current study were to establish Paris norms for the RADS and to fulfill Paris' need for an instrument to efficiently and inexpensively assess students suspected of having depression. This investigator hypothesized that the norms on the RADS would differ between Paris and the standardization sample and that female students would, as a whole, score higher than males. Results indicated that as a whole, female students scored 5.72 points higher than male students, although not significantly higher. It appears that the Paris and the standardization norm tables for the entire samples, that is not divided by gender, grade, or age, appear roughly equivalent. It is concluded that the Paris sample does not accurately represent the population of Paris adolescents and that the applicability of both the total standardization and Paris norm tables is unknown for students who were not in the sample. Due to the fact that standard scores based on Paris raw data and Paris descriptive statistics differ significantly from standard scores based on Paris raw data and standardization descriptive statistics, more research is needed to determine whether either norm table is applicable for Paris as a whole. Suggestions for future research and limitations of the current study are discussed.

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