Development and psychometric properties of a novel depression measure

The Filgueiras Depression Inventory is proposed as a new instrument, created speci cally for the Brazi-lian culture, for screening of Major Depressive Episodes according to the categories of the DSM-V. Two studies were conducted for this purpose. Study’s 1 sample consisted of 326 undergraduate psychology students. Single words or expressions were asked to represent overall depressive symptoms. The most cited formed the rst version of the Filgueiras Depression Inventory. Study 2 reported the psychome-tric properties of this new scale. The sample consisted of 471 volunteers recruited on the Internet and 238 volunteers undergraduate students. Factor analyses, convergent and discriminant validity and other Classical Test Theory indices revealed results consistent to expectations in the present study. Andrich’s Rating Scale Modeling was used as an Item Response Theory method of analysis. The overall psycho-metric properties of the Filgueiras Depression Inventory were shown to be good, and this study supports the effectiveness of this scale as a new instrument that measures depressive episodes in the Brazil.