A revised Spanish version of the Beck Depression Inventory: Psychometric properties with a Puerto Rican sample of college students

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a widely used self-report measure for depression. This study has two objectives: (a) to revise, develop, and adapt a Spanish language BDI (BDI-S) that takes the criteria for the diagnosis of major depression according to the DSM-IV into consideration; and (b) to evaluate the psychometric properties (internal reliability and construct validity) of the revised version of the BDI (BDI-S). A sample of 351 undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico participated in this study. The participants who agreed to participate in the study and signed the consent form completed self-report measures related to depression (BDI-S, CES-D, and LCSd-7), dysfunctional cognition (DAS-A and IBT), stressful life events (LES), and social support (CAS). The coefficient of internal consistency obtained for the 22 BDI-S items was.88. The correlation coefficients between the BDI-S and instruments that measured other constructs (not depression) were lower than the correlation coefficients between instruments that measured the same constructs. Factor analysis revealed that the factor loading for the BDI-S was congruent with dimensions of depression reported in the literature. These results generally support the internal consistency and the construct validity of the BDI-S.