Good Question? How Subtle Changes in Item Wording Alters Correlations between Cognitive Symptom Measures of Anxiety and Depression.

I provide empirical evidence that the long-established correlation between anxiety and depression is partially due to the item wording (i.e., valence and direction) used in self-report measures. We used a fully-crossed research design to administer experimentally-manipulated anxiety and depression items of different direction (positive/negative) and valence (pleasant/unpleasant) to participants (N=414).