Glossary / Lexicon

Beck Depression Inventory refers to a pencil and paper test used in conjunction with professional where subjects rate themselves on a variety of symptoms/experiences and is used to as sess depression or level of depression.

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a list of 21 symptoms and attitudes that are each rated in intensity. Examples include: mood, pessimism, sense of failure, lack of satisfaction, guilt feelings, self-dislike, etc. It is scored by summing the ratings given to the 21 items. Although originally designed to be administered by trained interviewers, it is most often self-administered and takes 5-10 minutes. This instrument has been used to measure severity of depression in depressed samples but has also been used to assess depression in general population samples. It is also associated with other self-report measures of depression. The reader is referred to Beck, Steer & Garbin (1988) for an overview of the measure and its applications.

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, 1978) assesses depressive symptomatology with items focusing on particular emotional (e.g, "sadness", "crying") or cognitive (e.g., "pessimism", "indecisiveness") themes associated with depression. Each item is accompanied by 4 or 5 descriptive statements with varying intensity of depressive content. Respondents select the statement that is most closely aligned with their own experience. Scores on each item rang from zero to three, with higher values being associated with greater depressive content.