Validating the McGill revision of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire

Research has identified important psychometric differences between the original Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Affliti, & Quinlan, 1976) and two of its most widely used revisions, which have failed to preserve the degree of between-scale orthogonality routinely observed with the original Dependency and Self-Criticism scales. The purpose of this study was (a) to examine construct validity for the recently developed McGill revision of the DEQ (Santor, Zuroff, & Fielding, this issue), which preserves between-scale orthogonality; (b) to compare the McGill revision of the DEQ with other existing revisions with respect to measures of personality, motivation, and interpersonal relatedness; and (c) to explore the correlates of items that appear to be responsible for maintaining the degree of orthogonality between measures of Dependency and Self-Criticism. Results suggest that (a) the McGill revision of the DEQ offers more valid estimates of the relations among dependency, self-criticism, and other theoretically relevant constructs, such as depressed mood and agreeableness, than other existing revisions and (b) items differentiating Dependency and Self-Criticism assess broad interpersonal orientations that can be characterized as communal or agentic. Results validate the newer McGill scales, further support the utility of the methods used in their development, and provide insights into the differences between Dependency and Self-Criticism.