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BSI Handout

The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) is a 53-item self-report inventory that screens for general mental health symptoms and specific disorders. It was derived from the SCL-90 to provide a more time-efficient measure. The BSI can be used to assess current psychological status or track trends over time. It takes about 10 minutes to complete and yields scores on 9 symptom dimensions as well as 3 global indices of distress, intensity, and number of symptoms endorsed. The BSI has demonstrated good validity and reliability according to multiple studies. However, some research has found that culturally relevant and age-specific norms are needed.

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Anna Webster
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2K views2 pages

BSI Handout

The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) is a 53-item self-report inventory that screens for general mental health symptoms and specific disorders. It was derived from the SCL-90 to provide a more time-efficient measure. The BSI can be used to assess current psychological status or track trends over time. It takes about 10 minutes to complete and yields scores on 9 symptom dimensions as well as 3 global indices of distress, intensity, and number of symptoms endorsed. The BSI has demonstrated good validity and reliability according to multiple studies. However, some research has found that culturally relevant and age-specific norms are needed.

Uploaded by

Anna Webster
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI)

Anna Webster Purpose: The BSI is a 53-item self-report inventory that screens for both general mental health symptoms, and specific disorders. It offers a current, point-in-time psychological symptom status, or can be used repeatedly to document trends over time.

Administer to: Adults and youth 13-years and older. It can be used for nonpatients, psychiatric outpatient, and inpatient populations; there are separate norms for each of these groups, as well as for males and females.

Development: The BSI was derived from the SCL-90 to provide clinicians with a measure that was more time efficient. Developers chose chose 5-6 items per subscale from SCL-90 that loaded highest. There is now an 18-item version of the BSI.

Normative Sample: The normative sample for the BSI included 1002 psychiatric outpatients, 974 nonpatients, 423 psychiatric inpatients, and 2,409 adolescent nonpatients. The sample was somewhat skewed towards lower SES, but minorities were well represented.

Dimensions: There are 9 primary symptom dimensions in the BSI; somatization, obsessivecompulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychotisism. There are 3 global indices; the global severity index (GSI) provides a composite score of severity-of-illness, the positive symptom distress index (PSDI) measures the intensity of symptoms, and the positive symptom total (PST) is the number of items that are positively endorsed.

Administration: The test can be completed via paper and pencil, audio cassette, or computer; it takes approximately 10-minutes to complete. It is written at a grade-6 reading level; however audio cassette administration makes it usable with individuals with lower reading levels. The BSI uses a 5-response format (0=not at all, 4=extremely). Administrators should be available during administration to answer any questions that may arise.

The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) cont.


Scoring: The BSI can be scored by hand, mail-in service, computer, or via optical scan scoring. The computer scoring and mail-in service provide the option for profile, interpretive, and progress reports. Hand scoring can be a little more time consuming; scores for each of the dimensions are summed, and then divided by the number of items endorsed to yield a raw score. The raw scores are plotted on a graph which also provides the t-score; these t-scores can also be found in the appendix. To calculate the global severity index, sum all the scores (including from the 4 additional items) then divide by the number of items endorsed (i.e. 53 if all items were completed). To calculate the positive symptom distress index, divide the sum of the scores by the number of items positively endorsed.

Validity: The BSI showed good convergent validity with the MMPI, and excellent convergent validity with the SCL-90. A number of independent studies have demonstrated that overall it has good predictive validity. There is evidence of construct validity based on factor analytic studies.

Reliability: The BSI shows good internal consistency with alpha coefficients on all 9 scales ranging from .71(psychotisism) to .85 (depression). Test-retest reliability ranged from a low of .68 (somatisation) to a high of .91 (phobic anxiety)

Limitations/critiques: Numerous independent studies have documented the need for culturally relevant norms. Ironically, due to its efficiency, there are cases where the BSI is being used in clinical practice with populations it was not intended for (i.e. traumatic brain injury). Other studies have found the need for age-relevant norms, particularly in regards to the elderly.

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