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The Beck Depression

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Participants for this study will be a convenience sample of 100 volunteers out of Millersville University in Pennsylvania. The participants for this study will be students enrolled in general psychology courses at the University. Student’s ages will range from 18 years old to 23 years old. Participants can be from a college freshman to a senior. There will be two groups observed in this study; the first group will have reported participating in less than five hours of structured physical activity per week, while the second group will have reported participating in more than five hours of structured physical activity per week. Informed consent (see Appendix A) will be obtained from each individual before participating in this study. Monetary payments will not be given for participating, extra credit will be decided …show more content…

This widely used 21-item self-report inventory measures depression in adolescents and adults. Aaron Beck created this self-report inventory in 1961; it was later revised in 1996. The questionnaire consists of 21 questions, each having a set of at least four possible answer choices, ranging in intensity. Each answer is scored on a scale from zero (symptoms not present) to 3 (symptoms very intense). Total scores can be from zero to 63, higher total scores indicate more severe depression symptoms. A person experiencing minimal depression is expected to score between zero and 13, where an individual with symptoms of severe depression is expected to score between 29 and 63. Items on the questionnaire include feelings of sadness, feeling like a failure, disappointment, sleep loss, and appetite loss. A limitation of this self-report measurement is that scores can be easily minimized. The BDI-II (Beck, 1996) is highly correlated with the Hamilton Depression Scale (Hamilton, 1960); it also has a high test-retest reliability and high internal

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