The present review discusses validity aspects of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) on the basis of meta-analyses of studies on the psychometric properties. Shortcomings of the BDI are its high item difficulty, lack of representative norms, and thus doubtful objectivity of interpretation, controversial factorial validity, instability of scores over short time intervals (over the course of 1 day), and poor discriminant validity against anxiety. Advantages of the inventory are its high internal consistency, high content validity, validity in differentiating between depressed and nondepressed subjects, sensitivity to change, and international propagation. The present paper outlines agreements and contradictions between the various studies on the BDI and discusses the potential factors (composition of the subject sample, statistical procedures, point in time of measurement) accounting for the variance in their results.

The construct validity of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) in measuring treatment outcome is assessed in 103 psychiatric inpatients. In this context, construct validity means that the BDI measures the same construct in repeated measurement and that the change scores can be explained by treatment effects. In confirmatory factor analyses, only the first factor proved to be stable. In accordance with other studies, the sensitivity to therapeutic change in long-term intervals of several weeks could be confirmed. Significant changes in a short-term interval of 1 day in the non-endogenously depressed patients indicate an overreactivity of the BDI to change which cannot be explained by treatment effects or mood changes.

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