BDI-II: Self-Report and Interview-based Administration Yield the Same Results in Young Adults

Abstract

Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) is one of the most used instruments for depression assessment. Stepankova Georgi, H., Vlckova,H., Lukavsky, K., Kopecek, J., M., & Bares, M. (2019). Beck Depression Inventory-II: Self-report or interview-based administrations show different results in older persons. International Psychogeriatrics, 31(5), 735–742.) found that BDI-II yielded lower scores when administered to elderly participants in the interview form after previous questionnaire form. Stepankova Georgi et al. imply that some participants misunderstand the instructions, which inflates their score, and that the interview form of BDI-II has a potential to prevent such bias thanks to the interviewer’s feedback. However, many studies have found a decrease in BDI-II scores simply due to the repeated administration. Our study aims to test whether the hypothesis of Stepankova Georgi, H., Vlckova, H., Lukavsky, K., Kopecek, J., M., & Bares, M. (2019). Beck Depression Inventory-II: Self-report or interview-based administrations show different results in older persons. International Psychogeriatrics, 31(5), 735–742.) is plausible by using a sample of young adults without cognitive impairment. We administered the Czech version of BDI-II in both the questionnaire and the interview form to a convenience sample of 125 young adults (Mage = 22.3, 60% women) and performed a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to within-subject compare mean scores. We show that both administration forms yield similar mean scores. The results imply that BDI-II can be administered to young adults without cognitive impairment in either form without the risk of substantial bias, but the interview form can still prevent misunderstanding of instructions in some respondents.