Beck Depression Inventory 의 한국판 표준화 연구 -정상집단을 중심으로 (I) -

A Standardization Study of Beck Depression Inventory in Korea

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) has become widely used tool for measuring the depth level of depression, yet there are no adequate data from Korean sample. The present study was carried out in Korea. The purposes were 1) to examine the scale’s reliability and validity in a different language and culture, 2) to make norms for normal adults group, and 3) to find out the underlying factor structure and to make a factor scale. BDI was translated into Korean. The scale was used in 539 normals and 171 psychiatric patients with depressive symptoms. The results show that BDI is 1) a internally consistent and 2) valid measure in that it sensitively discriminates between normals and psychiatric patients with depressive symptoms. Norms for normal adults were made. Korean was higher in BDI score than that of Western. Form of distribution was somewhat positively skewed (skewness 0.61). Factor analytic study finds out 5 factors underlying the BDI A factor scale was structured in the way most efficientte scoring the 5 factors. Authors discussed the BDI as a screening instrument and tried to decide the cut off score tentatively.