The Italian versions of the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory-II: Psychometric properties and discriminant power

Background: Epidemiological evidence suggests that anxiety and depressive disorders are the most common mental disorders. A common way to assess anxiety and depressive symptoms is through self-reports. Relevant to the aims of present study is the fact that content validity of self-reports can vary across different cultures. As a consequence, validity should be established when the instrument is used with cultural groups on which it has not been standardized. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to present data on the Italian versions of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), probably among the most common self-reports that measure the severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Method: the Italian version of the BAI was administered to a sample of 831 individuals belonging to the general population and to a sample of 122 patients with either anxiety or depressive disorders. The Italian version of the BDI-II was administered to a sample of 723 college students and to a sample of 72 depressed patients. Alpha and test-retest reliabilities were computed along with associations with age and education. The BAI and BDI-II were also subjected to a Confirmative Factor Analysis and a second-order factor analysis. Convergent validity was ascertained by computing the product-moment correlations with other conceptually-related self-report measures. Lastly, to ascertain the discriminative power of the BAI and BDI-II, normal and clinical samples were compared by means of ROC analysis. Results: the BAI and BDI-II proved reliable measures. Overall, demographic variables did not influence the scores of the BAI and the BDI-II. Confirmative factor analysis for both measures showed the best fit for a multi-factor solution; however, a second-order factor analysis showed strong support for a higher order unidimensional structure of the BAI and BDI-II. Validity was confirmed by the significant association with other measures of anxiety or depression. Lastly, ROC curves indicate excellent discriminative power of the BAI and BDI-II for distinguishing patients from non clinical individuals. Conclusions: The BAI and BDI-II proved a reliable and valid measure of anxiety and depressive symptoms in the Italian context. The present study confirmed the excellent psychometric properties of the BAI and BDI-II on Italian individuals and supported its use in both normal and clinical individuals.