The 19 items of the RDSI measure the severity of contemporary depressive symptoms. Although a formal diagnosis is not provided, empirically derived cutoff scores identify individuals who may be at risk for more serious, diagnostic forms of depression.
Quickly assesses DSM-IV™-specified symptomatology for major depressive disorder
- Development sample consisted of 531 nonreferred community adults and 324 psychiatric outpatients (including 150 outpatients diagnosed with major depression).
- Highly reliable and internally consistent, with high alpha coefficients (.93 and .90 for the community and psychiatric outpatient samples, respectively). Test-retest reliability of the RDSI also is very high (rtt = .94).
- The RDSI showed a high correlation with the BDI® (r = .94) and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale clinical interview (r = .93).