Psychometric aspects of the Beck Depression Inventory-II and the Beck Depression Inventory for Primary Care in Facebook users

ABSTRACT Objective The evaluation of depression with valid, reliable, and brief psychometric instruments is a common need for clinicians and other mental health professionals. The present study presents the psychometric evidence of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and its version developed especially for primary care professionals (BDI-PC). Methods The sample was chosen non-probabilistically from Facebook users. The group consisted of 692 Brazilian participants, of whom 71.7% were women with a mean age of 27.9 years (SD = 11.6) and 28.3% were men with a mean age of 30.1 years (SD = 11.4). In general, the mean age of participants was 28.5 years (SD = 11.5). The Samejima Gradual Response model of the Item Response Theory (IRT) was modeled. Results The results present that BDI-II (CFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.04) and BDI-PC (CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = 0.01) are sufficiently unidimensional, and both have adequate reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.96 for BDI-II and 0.92 for BDI-PC. Conclusions This work presents an important contribution to the psychological/neuropsychological evaluation area, and offers to the community of researchers and clinicians original evidence that provides the use of BDI-PC.