The Irrational Beliefs Inventory:cross cultural comparisons between American and Dutch samples

The 50-item Irrational Beliefs Inventory (IBI) was developed in the Netherlands for the assessment of irrational thinking. The IBI was derived from the Rational Behavior Inventory (RBI) and the Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT). The present study was designed to assess the applicability of the IBI in a different cultural context. The English language version of the IBI was administered to a non-clinical American sample of 248 undergraduate students (143 females, 105 males, mean age 21.38 yrs), and the results were compared to the original data for 538 Dutch university students (307 females, 227 males, 4 unknown, mean age 23 yrs). Two indices were examined: (1) the internal consistency reliability of the five subscales expressed in terms of Cronbach's alpha coefficient for both American and Dutch samples and (2) the intercorrelations of the five subscales in both samples. With one exception reliabilities for the subscales in the American and Dutch samples were of acceptable magnitudes. The intercorrelations of the IBI show that the subscales are quite independent from each other in both the English language version and the Dutch language version. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2002 APA, all rights reserved