Psychometric Properties of Three Common Depression Measures in Breast Cancer Patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women in the United States and MDD is the most common mental health problem in women with breast cancer. There is lack of research on measures of depression in this population. This study examined the psychometric properties of three commonly used depression measures, the BDI-II, CES-D, and HRSD, with clinically depressed breast cancer patients (n = 127). Findings revealed the measures displayed good distributional characteristics, internal consistency, and convergent validity. Discriminative validity with the BAI was not demonstrated, however, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the existing models of these measures are inadequate. The results indicate that these measures are appropriate for use with clinically depressed breast cancer patients, but that further investigation of discriminative validity is necessary to better determine construct validity with anxiety measures. Because of inadequate fit of this sample with existing models, interpretation of scores on these measures may be better accomplished via reference to more valid structural models obtained through exploratory factor analyses, providing a more accurate conceptualization of the dimensions of MDD in breast cancer patients.