Modification of the Beck Depression Inventory for use with a deaf population

Research on depression in deaf individuals has been hampered by difficulties in assessment that result from the linguistic problems many deaf persons have with the English language. We report preliminary psychometric data on a modification of the Beck Depression Inventory in which it was simplified linguistically for use with the deaf population. Internal consistency of the revised version of 56 hearing college students was good and very close to that of the original version in a separate sample of 56 hearing students. Mean scores on the two versions were also very similar. Internal consistency of the revision in a sample of 102 deaf college students was moderately good, but lower than in the hearing sample. The results are considered encouraging for further instrument development.