Reliability and validity of the Beck depression and anxiety inventories in Caucasian Americans and Latinos

Although the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory are two of the most widely used instruments for assessing depressive and anxious symptoms in both clinical and nonclinical populations, their cross-cultural reliability and validity have yet to be fully established. In this study, 2,703 Caucasian American and 1, 110 Latino college students completed both measures. For each measure, exploratory factor analysis with promax rotation, conducted separately by ethnic group, revealed similar factor structures across groups. For both groups, and both instruments, factor analysis yielded highly similar two-factor solutions. Reliability, as evidenced by internal consistency coefficients, was good; all alphas exceeded .82. On both measures, Latina students scored significantly higher than Caucasian American students on total scores and women scored significantly higher than men. These results support the reliability, validity, and cultural equivalence of these measures of depressive and anxious symptomatology for use with Caucasian American and acculturated Latino younger college students.