Beck Depression Inventory
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The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), created by Dr. Aaron T. Beck, is a 21 question multiple choice survey that is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring depression severity. The test asks questions about depression symptoms over the preceding week, including emotions such as hopelessness and irritability, cognitions such as guilt or feelings of being punished, as well as physical symptoms such as fatigue, weight loss, and lack of interest in sex.
Each set of four possible answer choices range in increasing intensity. When the test is scored, a value of 0 to 3 is assigned for each answer and then the total score is compared to a key to determine the depression's severity. The standard cut-offs are as follows: 0-9 indicates that a person is not depressed, 10-18 indicates mild-moderate depression, 19-29 indicates moderate-severe depression and 30-63 signifies indicates severe depression. Higher total scores indicate more severe depressive symptoms. Internal consistency is good, with a Cohen’s Alpha coefficient of around 0.85 (Lovibond and Lovibond 1995; Naughton and Wiklund 1993; Ambrosini et al. 1991; Craven et al. 1988; Levin et al. 1988).
The newer BDI-II was revised to be more in line with the DSM-IV. Items involving changes in body image, somatic preoccupation, and work difficulty were replaced. Also, sleep loss and appetite loss items were revised to assess both increases and decreases in sleep and appetite. Finally, participants are to rate how they have been feeling for the past two weeks, as opposed to the past week as in the BDI.
The BDI is one of the most widely used measures of depression in psychological research, but can also be used in clinical practice e.g. before and after treatment. In participants with concomitant physical illness it has been suggested (e.g. Moore et al. 1998) that its reliance on physical symptoms such as fatigue might artificially inflate scores due to symptoms of the illness, rather than of depression.
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References
Ambrosini PJ, Metz C, Bianchi MD, Rabinovich H, Undie A. Concurrent validity and psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory in outpatient adolescents. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 1991; 30: 51-57
Beck AT. Beck Hopelessness Scale. The Psychological Corporation; 1988.
Beck AT, Ward C, Mendelson M. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Arch Gen Psychiatry 1961; 4: 561-571.
Craven JL, Rodin GM, Littlefield C. The Beck Depression Inventory as a screening device for major depression in renal dialysis patients. Int J Psychiatry Med 1988; 18: 365-374
Levin BE, Llabre MM, Weiner WJ. Parkinson's disease and depression: psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1988; 51: 1401-1404
Lovibond PF, Lovibond SH. The structure of negative emotional states: comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories. Behav Res Ther 1995; 33: 335-343.
Moore MJ, Moore PB, Shaw PJ. Mood disturbances in motor neurone disease. Journal of the Neurological Sciences 1998; 160 Suppl 1: S53-S56
Naughton MJ, Wiklund I. A critical review of dimension-specific measures of health-related quality of life in cross-cultural research. Qual Life Res 1993; 2: 397-432.
