The Beck Depression Inventory: Testing for its factorial validity and invariance across gender for Bulgarian non-clinical adolescents

Based on a community sample of 691 Bulgarian high school adolescents (male N = 293; females N = 398), the purposes of the study were two-fold: (a) to test for the factorial validity of a translated version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) separately for males and females; and (b) to test for the invariance of its factorial structure across gender. Confirmatory factor analytic findings replicated past research in showing that, although a second-order factor structure best described the data for both males and females, there was some evidence of differential item functioning across gender. These gender differences are discussed from both a substantive and a methodological perspective.