Background:
Depression measurement tools in cross-cultural research require careful design and thorough validation to ensure that cognitive concepts in one culture can be appropriately translated and applied to a differing culture. The aim of this paper was to report the validation of the Chinese version of a screening measure of state depression, the DMI-10.
Method:
Three interdependent studies were conducted: 1) an initial bilingual test-retest study identified four (of the ten) items as having poor cross-cultural validity, 2) a second study involved focus group participants exploring the meaning of translated items with Chinese speakers and 3) the third study repeated the bilingual test-retest analyses on the modified DMI-10.
Results:
Study 3 showed improved correlation coefficients on all items and an excellent overall correlation (r = 0.87) between the Chinese and English versions.
Conclusions:
The findings have significant implications for cross-cultural research. Subsequently, our research team undertook a study to validate the Chinese DMI-10 against the Chinese versions of the BDI-II and the CIDI. The DMI-10 should prove useful in identifying Chinese people at risk of clinical depression.