Data files supporting "Do errors in the GHQ-12 response options matter?"

Background: The twelve item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) is a widely used measure of psychological wellbeing. Because there are seven different sets of response options across the twelve items, there is scope for transcription errors to occur when researchers assemble their study materials. The impact of such errors might be more important if they occur in the first set of response options than if they occur later in the questionnaire, once participants have become aware that options to the right of the GHQ-12 response sets always indicate worse wellbeing.Aims: To test the impact of introducing errors into the first and eighth set of response options for the GHQ-12 that render those response sets partially illogical.Methods: We used a double-blind randomised controlled trial, pre-registered with Open Science Framework (osf.io/syhwf). Participants were recruited by a market research company from their existing panel of respondents in Great Britain. Participants were randomly allocated to receive one of three versions of the GHQ-12: a correct version (n=500), a version with a mistake in the first item (n=502), or a mistake in the eighth item (n=502). Mistakes replaced ‘better than usual’ (item one) or ‘more so than usual’ (item eight) with ‘not at all.’Results: We found no differences between the versions in terms of number of participants with possible poor psychological wellbeing (χ2=0.32, df=2, p=0.85) or in mean GHQ-12 scores for the three groups (F(2, 1501)=0.26, p=0.77).Conclusions: Small deviations from the standard GHQ-12 wording do not have a substantive impact on results.

背景：十二项综合健康问卷（GHQ-12）是一种广泛应用的衡量心理健康水平的工具。由于十二个项目包含七种不同的回答选项组合，因此在研究者汇编研究材料时，存在转录错误发生的空间。如果此类错误出现在第一组回答选项中，其影响可能比出现在问卷后期，即参与者意识到GHQ-12回答选项右侧的选项始终表示更差的心理健康状态时更为重要。目标：测试在GHQ-12的第一组和第八组回答选项中引入错误，使得这些回答选项部分失去逻辑性的影响。方法：我们采用双盲随机对照试验，并在开放科学框架（osf.io/syhwf）上进行了预先注册。参与者由一家市场研究公司从其位于大不列颠的现有受访者面板中招募。参与者被随机分配到接收GHQ-12的三个版本之一：一个正确版本（n=500）、一个在第一项中存在错误的版本（n=502）或一个在第八项中存在错误的版本（n=502）。错误将“比平常更好”（第一项）或“比平常更甚”（第八项）替换为“完全不”。结果：我们发现，在可能存在心理健康状况不佳的参与者数量（χ2=0.32，df=2，p=0.85）或三个组的平均GHQ-12得分（F(2, 1501)=0.26，p=0.77）方面，版本之间没有差异。结论：GHQ-12标准措辞的微小偏差对结果没有实质性影响。