Temporal stability of the Brief Symptom Inventory 18 among Irish college students over four weeks

Of the currently limited available data on the mental health of students in Ireland the most notable are provided in the College Lifestyle and Attitudinal National (CLAN) Survey (Hope, Dring, & Dring, 2005). Recently, Houghton et al. (2012) found among students at an Irish university that women reported significantly higher levels of symptomatology than men on each of the three 6-item subscales of the Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (BSI 18; Derogatis, 2001) (anxiety, depression, and somatization) and the Global Severity Index (GSI; summed total of the 18 items). Similarly, final-year students had significantly worse mental health than non-final-year students. Internal reliability, construct validity, and factor structure of the BSI 18, were reported but no data on the test-retest reliability of the measure. Our aim was to supplement these findings by reporting on the test-retest reliability of the BSI 18 in a small sample of Irish college students.