EN
The paper presents results of psychometric analyses of the Polish translation of the Beck's Depression Inventory BDI-II. The sample included 456 subjects - 337 controls, 43 patients with depressive episodes and disorders (19 - current episode mild and moderate, 24 - current episode severe), 26 patients with anxiety disorders including mixed anxiety and depressive disorder, as well as 23 male prisoners and 27 females, experiencing domestic violence. The analyses comprise factorial structure of BDI-II items and their criterion-related validity (correlation with medical diagnosis of depression and severity of depression obtained by Clinical Global Impression - Severity Scale), as well as reliability and validity of the total BDI-II scale, done in control and clinical groups. The validity studies of the BDI-II scale were focused on construct-oriented validity (correlations with scales of TALEIA-400A inventory, assessing clinical disorders) and criterion-oriented validity (analyses of differences of BDI-II scores among control, demographic and clinical samples). Finally, the culture specific norms in the form of cut-off scores, differing controls and depressed subjects, were derived for diagnosing the mild and severe depression, as well as several indices of validity of diagnosis (like 'total misclassification rate', 'sensitivity', etc.). The results indicate the very high reliability and validity of the BDI-II translation, fully equivalent to the original version, what enables to recommend this inventory for use in scientific research and clinical practice regarding Polish-speaking subjects.