The amended (revised) Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-IA; Beck & Steer, 1993b) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) were self-administered to 140 psychiatric outpatients with various psychiatric disorders. The coefficient alphas of the BDI-IA and the BDI-II were, respectively, .89 and .91. The mean rating for Sadness on the BDI-IA was higher than it was on the BDI-II, but the mean ratings for Past Failure, Self-Dislike, Change in Sleeping Pattern, and Change in Appetite were higher on the BDI-II than they were on the BDI-IA. The mean BDI-II total score was approximately 2 points higher than it was for the BDI-IA, and the outpatients also endorsed approximately one more symptom on the BDI-II than they did on the BDI-IA. The correlations of BDI-IA and BDI-II total scores with sex, ethnicity, age, the diagnosis of a mood disorder, and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck & Steer, 1993a) were within 1 point of each other for the same variables.

A self‐report version of the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI) was administered to 50 inpatients diagnosed with mixed DSM‐III psychiatric disorders and 55 outpatients with affective disorders. The self‐report SSI was written for both paper‐and‐pencil and computer administration. The correlations between the self‐reported and clinically rated versions for both inpatients and outpatients were > 0.90, which suggests strong concurrent validity. The Cronbach coefficient alphas for the paper‐and‐pencil and computer versions were also in the 0.90s and indicated internal consistency. Furthermore, the mean SSI scores of the compute version for both the inpatients and outpatients were higher than the mean SSI scores of the clinical ratings; the patients described more severe suicide ideation than clinicians reported.

To ascertain the dimensions of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) in clinically depressed outpatients, exploratory factor analyses were performed with the BDI-II responses of 210 adult (> or =18 years) outpatients who were diagnosed with DSM-IV depressive disorders. Two factors representing Somatic-Affective and Cognitive dimensions were found whose compositions were comparable to those previously reported by Beck, Steer, and Brown (1996) for psychiatric outpatients in general. A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis supported a model in which the BDI-II reflected one underlying second-order dimension of self-reported depression composed of two first-order factors representing cognitive and noncognitive symptoms. The clinical utility of using subscales based on these two latter first-order symptom dimensions was discussed.

To provide further information about the construct validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II the inventory was administered to 210 psychiatric outpatients along with Derogatis' SCL 90-R. As hypothesized, the Beck Depression Inventory-II was more positively correlated with scores on the Depression subscale (r = .89) than it was with scores on the Anxiety subscale of the SCL-90-R (r = .71).

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