Transforming between Beck Depression Inventory and CORE-OM scores in routine clinical practice

Objectives. The Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation - Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) are routinely used to assess emotional problems. It would be helpful to be able to compare scores when only one of the measures is available. We investigated the relationship between the measures and produced translation tables. Methods. Level of agreement between CORE-OM and BDI-I was assessed for 2,234 clients who had completed both measures at referral for routine secondary care. Tables for predicting between the measures were constructed using several methods, including non-linear regression and non-parametric smoothing. Results were cross-validated on a separate sample of 326 clients. Results. High correlations between the measures were obtained (r = .862 for female clients; r = .855 for male clients). Accuracy in predicting caseness is higher than predicting depression levels. Conclusions. CORE-OM and BDI can be compared in routine clinical settings with acceptable accuracy.