Personality and depression : A validation study of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire

This study investigated the validity of Blatt's model of depression as indicated by his operational measure of its constructs via the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976). Hypothesized relations between the two relevant scales of the DEQ and Tellegen's (1982) Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) were examined. Participants consisted of 195 women, including 67 hospitalized unipolar depressives, 77 never-hospitalized unipolar depressives, and 51 nonpsychiatric controls. Overall, the results partially supported the validity of the DEQ even though all participants were women and prior studies have indicated the DEQ's greater discriminative validity for men than for women. However, several of the most strongly predicted relations, such as between DEQ Self-Criticism and MPQ Achievement were not confirmed. Coherent, significant relations between scales of the two measures remained after partialling out the effects of severity of depression.