The Beck Depression Inventory and General Health Questionnaire as measures of depression in the general population: A validation study using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview as the gold standard
Psychiatry Research, 06/14/2012
Clinical Article
Aalto AM et al. – The 6–item version of the Beck Depression Inventory showed acceptable criterion validity, although replication in an independent dataset is needed to confirm its validity.
Methods- A total of 5561 participants in the “Health 2000” survey (30-79years) completed the four scales and were assessed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), which was used as the validation criterion.
- The authors selected items for the BDI-6 through an exploratory factor analysis for the BDI-21.
- The accuracy of the scales, including the BDI-6, was satisfactory (c-statistics 0.88-0.92 for depression within the past 2weeks and 0.80-0.83 within the past 12months) and slightly better for men (0.92-0.96 and 0.85-0.87) than for women (0.86-0.88 and 0.78-0.79).
- Higher scores in all the scales were associated with more severe depression and more recent depressive episodes.
