The Children Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI):: Their validity as screening measures for major depression in a group of Puerto Rican adolescents

This quasi-experimental study evaluates the efficiency of the Children Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) in their Spanish versions, as screening measures for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) with a Puerto Rican clinical sample of adolescents. The sample consisted of 130 adolescents between 13 to 18 years of age. The results obtained show that the best cut-off point for the CDI to identify MDD is 20 with a sensibility index of .69, specificity of .43, a positive predictive value of .64, and negative predictive value of .49. The best cut-off point for the BDI is 12 with a sensibility of .65, specificity of .50, a positive predictive value of .67, and a negative predictive value of .47. In conclusion, the CDI and the BDI are fairly good instruments to be used in the screening for MDD for clinical samples with Puerto Rican adolescents. Specifically for the CDI, the results obtained differ considerably from the cut-off points, sensitivity and specificity scores obtained by Kovacs. Even when using the cut-off points recommended by the author of the instrument, the sensitivity and specificity scores to identify a disorder differ from one population to another; therefore, we cannot assume metric equivalency.