A study of the Spanish version of the Beck Depression Inventory II

Depression is the second most important health issue for individuals aged 15 to 44 years worldwide (WHO, 2001b). One of the most widely used scales to assess depression is the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; Beck, Steer & Brown, 1996). While the BDI-II is also available in Spanish (The Psychological Corporation, 1996), there are only two studies (Novy, Stanley, Averill & Daza, 2001; Penley, Wiebe & Nwosu, 2003) that have examined its psychometric properties. No research has been conducted on the Spanish BDI-II with a Mexican sample or with a student sample. The present research (a) examined the psychometric properties of the Spanish BDI-II with 202 Spanish-speaking Mexican students and (b) explored the interpretation of each item made by a subset of 18 participants using a Talk-Aloud Protocol. The Spanish BDI-II was found to have an essentially unidimensional factor structure. The alpha coefficient was .89 for the total sample with corrected item-total correlations ranging from .36 (loss of interest in sex) to .63 (self-dislike). No statistically significant gender differences were found on the total score and gender differential item functioning was not found in any of the Spanish BDI-II items. When a Talk-Aloud Protocol was used, a number of issues related to the translation of the items and the test format were raised. The implications of these findings for the use of the Spanish BDI-II with Mexican participants and recommendations for future revisions of the test were discussed.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat