A Technique to Measure College Students on the Depression-Elation Continuum

With the intent of amending the 21-item BDI-II to improve its reliability and validity when administering the scale to nonclinical populations, a survey package consisting of 19 positive items with semantically reflected response options to mirror the negative scenario options in the original BDI-II (excluding items 16 and 18) was created. These 19 items containing BDI-II's reflected response options was administered along side the BDI-II, creating a 40-item package. Factor analyses were performed on the two instruments separately to determine their properties in isolation, and then, considered jointly as a statistically bipolar instrument. Results indicated that nonclinical participants (such as students) endorsed the positively-graded items more frequently than the negative statements in the BDI-II. It was also discovered within the conjoint bipolar scale that a strong underlying factor was highly influential in the composite score, and that this score had a unique property of being normally distributed. It was concluded that these 19 reflected items would be instrumental in reliably placing both clinical and nonclinical populations along the depression-elation continuum when adjunct to the BDI-II.