Activation as an overlooked factor in the BDI-II: a factor model based on core symptoms and qualitative aspects of...

An adequate assessment of depression has been of concern to many researchers over the last half-century. These efforts have brought forth a manifold of depression rating scales, of which the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is 1 of the most commonly used self-assessment scales. Since its revision, the item structure of the BDI-II has been examined in many factor analytic studies, yet it has not been possible to achieve a consensus about the underlying factor structure. Recent findings from a nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis (Bühler, Keller, & Läge, 2012) of the German norming sample of the BDI-II emphasized a structure with different qualitative aspects of depression, which suggested that the existing factor models do not adequately represent the data. The NMDS results were reviewed, and on the basis of these findings, a different factor model is proposed. In contrast to the common factor models in the literature, the presented model includes an additional factor, which is associated with the activation level of the BDI-II symptoms. The model was evaluated with a 2nd sample of patients diagnosed with a primary affective disorder (N = 569) and obtained good fit indices that even exceeded the fit of the most reliable factor model (Ward, 2006) described in the literature so far. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on the methodological question of how factor models may be derived from the results of NMDS analyses.