The equivalence of written and computer formats of three questionnaires

Abstract

A study was conducted to examine the proposal that the presentation on computer of three questionnaires, the 20-Item Mackay Stress Arousal Checklist (MSAC-20), the 21-Item Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-21) and the 20-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-20), would be equivalent to the traditional pencil-and-paper version. For the MSAC-20 and the GHQ-20, the computer presentation did not influence the construct validity. The factor analysis of the HSCL-21 raised doubts regarding the reliability of this instrument. A comparative analysis of the GHQ-20 with two previous studies indicated that the computer mode had tended to inflate subject's scores -possible explanations of this result are discussed. The results show that for all three questionnaires the computer mode of presentation had no differential gender effect.