Impact of recall periods on responses to mental health questionnaires

What is it about?

There are numerous mental health questionnaires available to measure common symptoms which differ in many ways. Although a number of studies have examined how question wording affects responses, few studies have looked at recall periods. This study looked at responses to the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale when people were instructed to recall their symptoms over the past week, past month, or past six months. We did not find that people responded differently to the questionnaire items based on recall period.

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Photo by Celpax on Unsplash

Photo by Celpax on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings provide some evidence that recall periods do not impact the way people respond to mental health questionnaires. This can allow researchers to potentially compare or pool together data from questionnaires that use different recall periods. This is important because it can bring together questionnaire data from a wide variety of existing sources to answer questions about mental health without the need for collecting new data.