The inter-rater reliability of the Japanese version of the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology, Clinician version

The Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology, clinician version (IDS-C), was developed by Rush et al. to evaluate the severity of major depressive episodes. The aim of the present study was to establish the inter-rater reliability of the Japanese version of the IDS-C. A total of 16 subjects with DSM-IV major depressive episode were evaluated. Two psychiatrists, who had completed a training session for evaluating the IDS-C before starting this reliability study, attended systematic interview sessions with each subject to evaluate the IDS-C independently, using the Japanese version of the structured interview guide for combined rating of the IDS-C and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. The severity of the 30 IDS-C items assessed by the two raters ranged from0 to 4 for 27 items and from 0 to 3 for 3 items. The analysis of variance intra-class correlation inter-rater reliability values for the individual scale items ranged from 0.874 to 1.000. The present results suggest that the Japanese version of the IDS-C is a potentially useful rating instrument with high inter-rater reliability for measuring the severity of depressive symptoms in the hands of psychiatrists with sufficient evaluation training. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.