Informing the continuity controversy: A taxometric analysis of depression.

2000/08/01 by John Ruscio, Ayelet Meron Ruscio · 2 citations
Psychology · #Mental Health Research Topics #Mental Health Treatment and Access #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Conceptualization #Psychology #Depression (economics) #Categorical variable #Construct (python library) #Clinical psychology #Psychiatry #Psychotherapist

paper · doi:10.1037/0021-843x.109.3.473

openalex publication_date 2000/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Researchers and practitioners have long debated the structural nature of mental disorders. Until recently, arguments favoring categorical or dimensional conceptualizations have been based primarily on theoretical speculation and indirect empirical evidence. Within the depression literature, methodological limitations of past studies have hindered their capacity to inform this important controversy. Two studies were conducted using MAXCOV and MAMBAC, taxometric procedures expressly designed to assess the underlying structure of a psychological construct. Analyses were performed in large clinical samples with high base rates of major depression and a broad range of depressive symptom severity. Results of both studies, drawing on 3 widely used measures of depression, corroborated the dimensionality of depression. Implications for the conceptualization, investigation, and assessment of depression are discussed.

Citations

• The emergence of gender differences in depression during adolescence.
• An Inventory for Measuring Depression
• Psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory: Twenty-five years of evaluation
• Development of depression from preadolescence to young adulthood: Emerging gender differences in a 10-year longitudinal study.
• Factors and Taxa, Traits and Types, Differences of Degree and Differences in Kind
• Taxometric Analysis: II. Detecting Taxonicity Using Covariance of Two Quantitative Indicators in Successive Intervals of a Third Indicator (Maxcov Procedure)
• A Self-Rating Depression Scale
• The prevalence and biometric structure of pathological dissociation in the general population: Taxometric and behavior genetic findings.

Cited by

• Implicit cognition and depression: A meta-analysis
• Paul E. Meehl [wikipedia]