Validation of the beck depression inventory-II in a Jamaican university student cohort

This project explores the internal consistency reliability and the concurrent and discriminant validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) using a wide cross-section of the student population attending the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.

Students enrolled in UWI Foundation courses during the first and second semesters of the 2005/2006 academic year (n = 690; 77% females, 23% males; mean age = 23.4 +/- 7.4 years) were administered the BDI-II along with the Brief Screen for Depression (BSD), the Centre for Epidemiological Studies--Depression Scale (CES-D) and the UCLA Loneliness Scale--Revised.

Overall, the BDI-II was found to have an acceptable degree of reliability (alpha = 0.90). The scale also had reasonably good concurrent validity as evidenced by high correlations with scores on the BSD (r = 0.74) and the CES-D (r = 0.71) and acceptable discriminant validity as demonstrated through moderate correlations with the UCLA Loneliness Scale (r = 0.50). This pattern of scores suggests that the majority of the variance underlying the BDI-II assesses depression (50% to 55%) while a smaller degree of the variability (25%) measures a conceptually similar but distinct concept.

The BDI-II is a reliable and valid measure for assessing depression within the Jamaican population.