Background The behavioral activation method is a short-term, evidence-based approach that promotes functional activation by reinforcing adaptive behaviors and eliminating avoidance behaviors. This study aims to validate the Korean version of the Behavior Activation for Depression Scale-Short Form (K-BADS-SF) among Korean community adults, providing an objective measure of behavioral activation.
Methods A total of 471 participants, ranging in age from 18 to 69 years, completed an online survey. They filled out the K-BADS-SF and its long-form version, the K-BADS, as well as the Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System (BIS/BAS) scales, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). The K-BADS-SF was subject to a thorough psychometric evaluation, which included analyzing internal consistency, test-retest reliability, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and both convergent and discriminant validity analyses.
Results Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses show that the model fit of the K-BADS-SF improves when certain items from the original scale are moved from the activation factor to the avoidance factor.
Conclusions The K-BADS-SF exhibits sufficient reliability and validity in the Korean community sample, confirming its effectiveness as a valuable tool for assessing behavioral activation.
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The relationship between behavioral activation and burnout in a community setting: the mediating role of acceptance-based action, automatic negative thought, and self-efficacy Hyewon Yeo, Jini Tae, Yoonhyoung Lee, Youngeun Kim, Wonhye Lee Frontiers in Psychology.2025;[Epub] CrossRef
Background This study examined whether automatic attention bias toward emotional stimuli differs among individuals with varying anxiety and depression levels in the non-clinical population.
Methods A total of 494 participants from the community completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). The dot-probe task was conducted to compare attention biases when emotional stimuli appeared before the target versus neutral stimuli did.
Results There were differences in attention bias based on the stimuli types, even among the non-clinical community. The anxiety tendency group showed attention bias towards positive expressions, while the depression tendency group showed attention bias toward negative expressions. The group with anxiety and depression tendencies showed mixed characteristics observed in both the anxiety and depression groups.
Conclusions This study showed that attention bias toward emotional stimuli is an information-processing bias influenced by an individual’s internal state. This study contributes to the understanding of attention bias differences among groups based on anxiety and depression tendencies in non-clinical population of various ages.