Psychometric Validation of the Derogais' Brief Simptom Inventory (BSI)

Štibrić, Marina. (2005). Psychometric Validation of the Derogais' Brief Simptom Inventory (BSI). Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Psychology. [mentor Ljubotina, Damir].

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Abstract

Brief Simptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis 1993) is a 53-item self-report inventory designed to assess current level of psychological symptoms and distress. To evaluate the applicability of this measure in croatian conditions, metric caracteristics have been verified and compared to norms. The BSI was administrated to 500 participants from general population and 159 persons who had traumatic experience, but never asked for professional help. Percentages symptomatic in general population were larger then american norms, but smaller then percetages of traumatized persons. Traumatised persons had statisticaly significant greater results on all dimensions and global indicies than general population. On separate dimensions, there was significant difference between the sexes in the general population which was, as expected, in favor of women. Compared with american adult nonpatient norms (Derogatis, 1993), both traumatised persons and members of general population scored higher. BSI indicated good sensitivity in consideration of the fact that it better discriminated the participants which experienced greater levels of distress. Discriminative validity of all of the items was good. Reliability of the whole BSI was very high and internal consistancy on separate dimensions ranged from �±= .83 to �±= .92 in the traumatised persons group and from �±= .69 to �±= .84 in general population. Principal components analysis revealed one dominant component that accounted for large majority of the variance and which had substantial loadings on all of the items in both samples. Unidimensionality of the BSI was corroborated by the homogenity of the Inventory and significant corelations among the dimensions. These findings indicate that the composite score on the Brief Symprom Inventory is a good indicator of distress and that it reflects the degree but not the precise nature of the psychopathology.

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