Achieving Depression Literacy: The Adolescent Depression Knowledge Questionnaire (ADKQ)

Mental health literacy appears to be an important target for prevention and intervention efforts. However, limitations exist in this literature base, including the lack of a validated measure to assess this construct. The Adolescent Depression Knowledge Questionnaire (ADKQ) was created to assess knowledge of depression and attitudes about seeking help (i.e., depression literacy) for mental health issues before and after introduction of a universal, school-based intervention, the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program (ADAP). The ADKQ measured depression knowledge and attitudes in 8,216 high school students immediately before ADAP was implemented and 6 weeks after. The latent structure of the Knowledge section was examined with attention to measurement invariance between males and females and type of instructor, as well as pre- to post-test. Categories were developed for the open-ended questions of the Attitudes section. A one-factor (General Knowledge) latent structure was the best fit to the data. The latent structure of the ADKQ did not differ by student’s gender or type of instructor, nor did it differ based on pre- or post-test. Categories for the Attitudes portion of the ADKQ were developed. Psychometric evidence supports the ADKQ as a measure to evaluate adolescent depression literacy pre- to post-test and within several groups of interest (e.g., gender, facilitator). Categories for the Attitudes section of the ADKQ will allow for easier evaluation of this measure with quantitative data.