A cross-cultural comparison of the brief symptom inventory

A cross-cultural study of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) was conducted w ith a sample of university students from India and Canada. The results indi cated much higher rates of symptom reporting in the Indian sample, Canadian students also had higher reported symptom scales when compared to a simila r size USA sample. A small sample of older respondents was also compared wi th a British sample. Examination of the structure of the BSI scale was inve stigated using a multidimensional scaling analysis, The Indian data had a s omatization-paranoid ideation dimension and a psychoticism-interpersonal se nsitivity dimension. With the Canadian sample, there was a hostility-phobic anxiety dimension along with a somatization-paranoid ideation dimension.