Describes the development and testing of a 24-item self-report questionnaire that measures psychological distress among immigrants. Researchers sought to devise a brief instrument that not only would yield reliable and valid measurement of psychological symptoms among large groups of immigrants, but also could be compared with norms of existing instruments. The Talbieh Brief Distress Inventory (TBDI) synthesizes items from both the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview Demoralization Scale (PERI-D), removing repetitive items and offering a global score as well as scores for obsessiveness, hostility, sensitiveness, depression, anxiety, and paranoid ideation. Selected items from the PERI-D (11) and the BSI (13) were administered to a sample of nearly 1,000 nonpsychiatric immigrants between the ages of 18 and 87 living in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Beer-Sheva, Israel. Results suggested that the TBDI is a promising screening instrument for determining psychological distress and symptomatology in immigrant populations. Moreover, study results demonstrated that the TBDI possibly could replace the longer versions of both the BSI and the PERI-D and thus considerably reduce administration time and costs.
