{"title":"Discriminability of the Beck Depression Inventory and its Abbreviations in an Adolescent Psychiatric Sample.","authors":"Fatemeh Seifi, Sebastian Therman, Tommi Tolmunen","doi":"10.2478/sjcapp-2025-0002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a widely acknowledged self-report screening tool for evaluating the presence and intensity of depressive symptoms. The BDI-IA, although an older version, is highly correlated with the updated BDI-II, remains clinically valuable, and is widely used due to its free availability.</p><p><strong>Aim: </strong>This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the BDI-IA and compare its diagnostic accuracy with the abbreviated BDI-SF, BDI-PC, and BDI-6 versions against gold-standard research diagnoses in a representative Finnish adolescent clinical population.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The participants were referred outpatient adolescents aged 13-20 years (N = 752, 73% female). We investigated structural validity with item factor analysis and evaluated the criterion validity of mean scores and factor scores with various diagnostic measures. Sample-optimal cut-offs (criterion unweighted Cohen's kappa) were estimated with a bootstrap procedure.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The sample-optimal cut-off for the full BDI was 19, slightly higher than that suggested by the previous literature. The abbreviations of the BDI-IA were demonstrated to be as good as the full scale in detecting depressive symptoms in all three diagnostic categorizations.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The use of brief and user-friendly questionnaires such as the BDI-PC or BDI-6 is recommended to ensure optimal depression screening and minimize the administrative burden, especially in primary care settings where clinical decision-making and referrals often need to occur within a limited time frame.</p>","PeriodicalId":42655,"journal":{"name":"Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology","volume":"13 1","pages":"9-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12023737/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/sjcapp-2025-0002","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PSYCHIATRY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a widely acknowledged self-report screening tool for evaluating the presence and intensity of depressive symptoms. The BDI-IA, although an older version, is highly correlated with the updated BDI-II, remains clinically valuable, and is widely used due to its free availability.
Aim: This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the BDI-IA and compare its diagnostic accuracy with the abbreviated BDI-SF, BDI-PC, and BDI-6 versions against gold-standard research diagnoses in a representative Finnish adolescent clinical population.
Methods: The participants were referred outpatient adolescents aged 13-20 years (N = 752, 73% female). We investigated structural validity with item factor analysis and evaluated the criterion validity of mean scores and factor scores with various diagnostic measures. Sample-optimal cut-offs (criterion unweighted Cohen's kappa) were estimated with a bootstrap procedure.
Results: The sample-optimal cut-off for the full BDI was 19, slightly higher than that suggested by the previous literature. The abbreviations of the BDI-IA were demonstrated to be as good as the full scale in detecting depressive symptoms in all three diagnostic categorizations.
Conclusion: The use of brief and user-friendly questionnaires such as the BDI-PC or BDI-6 is recommended to ensure optimal depression screening and minimize the administrative burden, especially in primary care settings where clinical decision-making and referrals often need to occur within a limited time frame.