In this study, the problem of using the mixing index as a measure of the mixing performance for a certain flow field has been discussed. The flow model subjected to this study is the two-dimensional unsteady lid-driven cavity flow. The transport equation for the concentration within the cavity was solved by using the finite volume method where the convective terms are discretized with the central difference scheme. It was shown that both the concentration dispersion and the mixing index depend highly on the initial distribution of the concentration, and therefore the mixing index obtained from the concentration dispersion equation loses its universal applicability.