Reliability and validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II with adolescent psychiatric inpatients

This investigation was conducted to validate the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) in samples of adolescent psychiatric inpatients. The sample in each substudy was primarily Caucasian. In Study 1, expert raters (N = 7) and adolescent psychiatric inpatients (N = 13) evaluated the BDI-II items to assess content validity. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analyses of several first-order solutions failed to provide adequate fit estimates to data for 205 boys, 203 girls, and the combined sample. Exploratory factor analyses identified new item-factor solutions. Reliability estimates were good (range = .72 to .91) for the BDI-II total and scale scores. In Study 3 (N = 161 boys and 158 girls from Study 2), preliminary evidence for estimates of concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity were established for the BDI-II.