Questionnaire context did not clearly change physical-symptom scores in systemic sclerosis
A randomized experiment tested whether awareness of a depression questionnaire changes answers about sleep, fatigue and appetite in people with systemic sclerosis.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
Separating questions about sleep, fatigue and appetite from the depression-questionnaire context did not produce a statistically significant difference in their combined score. Individual symptom items also showed no significant differences. In this systemic sclerosis cohort, the experiment did not support the hypothesized context effect on physical-symptom reporting.
Participants all belonged to a systemic sclerosis research cohort. The result does not establish that context never matters, that the formats are equivalent, or that the same pattern holds across other chronic illnesses.
What researchers found
Physical-symptom sum-score difference
Comparing reordered and standard PHQ-8 formats during routine questionnaire completion; the difference was not statistically significant.
What changed between groups
Researchers randomly assigned participants to a standard questionnaire or to a version that separated physical-symptom questions from psychological items. The altered version did not identify the physical items as part of a depression assessment.
What the uncertainty means
The confidence interval included differences in either direction. That leaves uncertainty about smaller context effects, even though the experiment did not find the higher physical-symptom scores the researchers had predicted.
The original publication
Evaluating context effects on PHQ-8 somatic item scores among people with a chronic medical condition: a scleroderma patient-centred intervention network randomised experiment.
Hu S, Carrier ME, Golberg M et al.
Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci · 2026
- PubMed ID
- 41728805
- Record checked
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