Transparency of the BDI-II
Depression is mental disorder that can have affective, cognitive and physical symptoms, which can alter the good functioning and well-being of an individual. Many tests have been constructed to assess this construct due to all its repercussions. The most common test is the Beck Depression Inventory.
This test is used to assess the presence and degree of depression in individuals’ aged between 13 and 80 years old. This test is widely used because it is not time consuming; since there are only 21 questions, which permit the examiner to have an efficient tool to measure depression. Moreover, the internal consistency of this test is considerably high; its coefficient Alpha is 0.92. However, the test-retest reliability is lower considering that depression is a construct that can vary from week to week within the same patient. One limitation of the BDI-II that is important to stress is that it is a self-report assessment, and participants can easily change their responses to appear more socially desirable and less depressed or appear more depressed. In other words, there is excessive transparency because an examinee can influence their final results.
It is difficult to adjust this limitation because the Beck Depression Inventory II is a self-report that could be done in ten minutes. However, there is another method that could be used to assess the presence and degree of depression, which is the forced choice method. The latter method is often used for personality tests, but could also be used to solve the above problem. This method consists of responses that are equally desirable or not in the case of depression construct. This will permit the examinee to answer accordingly to how she/he feels and not selecting what is more socially acceptable.
Self-reports are often used to diagnose a patient with depression. Yet, there is a lack of test-retest reliability due to the rapid change of the construct within a patient, and considering that depression is not perceived as socially acceptable, leading many participants to lie about their results. The Beck Inventory Depression II test, is an adequate method when the examinee aims at having a representative score of their condition.
