title: Reliability and Validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II among Korean Adolescents.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) is one of the most popular scales for evaluating the severity of depression in adolescents as well as adults. The prevalence of depression increases during adolescence, and it has shown a rapid increase with occurrence at an earlier age and a tendency to continue into adulthood. Data from an adolescent nonclinical sample provides us more information related to depressive symptoms as potential risk factors. The current study was designed to two objectives: 1) to analyze the reliability and validity the BDI-II among Korean adolescents and 2) to evaluate the factorial structure in a Korean nonclinical adolescent sample.
  
  
  METHODS
  The participants included 1072 adolescent boys and girls. We assessed the internal consistency, corrected item-total correlation, and the convergent validity of the BDI-II. We also performed confirmatory factor analyses to determine the internal structure of the BDI-II for Korean adolescents using Mplus 6.1.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The Cronbach's alpha for the BDI-II total score was 0.89. The correlation between the BDI-II and the PHQ-9 was strong (r=0.75), and anxiety-related measures were 0.68 and 0.71, which were also in the high range. Among the five different factor structures, the modified three-factor model demonstrated the best overall fit.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The BDI-II is a reliable tool for measuring the severity of depressive symptoms in Korean adolescents. Therefore, the findings can provide basic information for examining the prevalence rate, intervention strategies for depression in adolescents.
authors.affiliation: Depression Center, Department of Psychiatry, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Eun-Ho
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Soo-Ji
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Soon-Taeg
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, Chinju National University of Education, Jinju, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sang-Hwang
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Ji-Hae
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Kim
keywords: Child and adolescence psychiatry; Depressive disorder; Diagnosis; Psychometrics