Measuring mental health accurately is an important endeavor for screening purposes. Depression scales, such as the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale, have been wellestablished among different populations. Yet, little work has been done to examine the reliability and validity of the CES-D among older American Indians and Alaska Natives. The purpose of our study was to examine the factor structure, reliability, and concurrent validity of the full 20-item and abbreviated 12-item CES-D scale with a sample of older American Indians. Our findings demonstrate excellent internal reliability and concurrent validity of the full and abbreviated CES-D scales in our study sample. , using in-person interviewer-administered surveys, data were collected on demographic characteristics, physical functioning, mental and physical health, personal assistance needs, and psychosocial resources. Inclusion criteria for this study included being an enrolled tribal member, aged ≥55 years, residing in the tribe's service area, noninstitutionalized, and having passed a cognitive screen. Study inclusion criteria were determined by our tribal partners. For instance, the tribal partners requested that the age criteria be dropped from ≥65 years to ≥55 years and that the tribal partners were only interested in obtaining such information from members that were community-dwelling in their service area since the intention was to use the data to reassess the tribe's array of community-based services. The Time and Change Test was used as a cognitive screener (Inouye, Robison, Froehlich, & Richardson, 1998). Tribal partners preferred this measure given its brevity and less bias due to participants' socioeconomic characteristics compared to the more commonly used Mini Mental State Examination.According to the tribal enrollment records, 1,430 persons were potentially eligible for study inclusion based on residential location and age. This list was randomized and the names and contact information were given to interviewers. Equal numbers of respondents were sought for the age groups 55-64, 65-74, and ≥75 years with a targeted sample size of 500. Randomly selected persons were recruited by telephone or home visit by an interviewer. Of the 633 persons assessed for eligibility, 50 were deemed ineligible. Of these 50 individuals, three resided outside of the tribe's service area; 4 VOLUME 24, ISSUE 3 remaining were conducted in a tribal office building. Seventy-eight persons refused to participate, yielding an 87% response rate and a final sample size of 505 with 491 who had complete responses to the full 20-item CES-D scale. Measures The CES-D scale measures depressive symptomatology, of which the full CES-D scale consists of 20 items (Radloff, 1977) and an abbreviated version consists of 12 items (Liang, Van Tran, Krause, & Markides, 1989); both were assessed as part of this study. The full scale's reliability and validity has been demonstrated among older adults and across different racial and ethnic groups (Kim et al., 2011). Sim...