Beck designed BID and the revision of BID-II as a 21 item standard personality multiple-choice questionnaire test that can be administered in ten minutes to groups or individuals within the population of 13 years old and above to evaluate their mental state and measure the severity of their depression (Beck , Steer, & Brown, 1996). BDI-II is a self -reported analysis of depressive symptoms, the wording of the BDI-II is clear and to the point.
The instruction for administrating and scoring the BDI-II is clearly stated and easy to follow requiring minimal training on the behalf of the administrator. However, scoring does require a clinical professional to analyze the severity of the depression (Beck, 1996). According to Beck (1996) 8 questions are related to emotional factors and the remaining 13 questions are pertinent to physiological factors.
Beck states that ” The emotional scale addresses symptoms like – self-hatred, guilt feelings, suicidal wishes, sense of despair, fear of failure, and hopelessness, while the physical scale deals with symptoms like – difficulty in concentrating, lack of energy, tendency to cry, sorrowfulness, loss of temper, and absence of appetite” (Beck, 1996). The BID-II is scored by summing the highest rating for each of the 21 item. Each item is then rated on a 4- point scale, ranging from O to 3, and the total score range from O to 63.
The score ranging from O to 13 represent ” minimal” depression; total score ranging from 14 to 19 represent ” mild” depression while total scores from 20-28 are ” moderate” and total scores from 29-63 are ” severe” (Beck, 1996). In 1996, Beck provided evidence that the BDI-II possesses adequate evidence of reliability. By measuring two normative clinical population the first test sample population onsisted of 500 men and women (n= 500) taken from four different outpatient clinic throughout the eastern part of the U. S.
