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Abstract
Careless responding was studied in the context of a large-scale survey-based study (Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort; n = 5024) wherein the Chapman Infrequency Scale (CIS) was used as the validity scale. Careless responding was infrequent in comparison to earlier studies that used students as subjects. Logistic regression analyses showed that the odds ratio for careless responding was 2.1 (95% confidence interval: 0.9–5.0) for respondents with a psychiatric diagnosis relative to healthy respondents. Male sex and lack of secondary education were other factors that correlated positively with CIS score. It is concluded that the common procedure of excluding careless respondents from final samples may affect the results of survey-based studies that target psychiatric patients. It is suggested that cutoff scores for exclusion should be flexible and chosen in line with the demographic and health characteristics of the sample.
Acknowledgements
This study has been supported by the Academy of Finland, Northern Finland Health Care Support Foundation, Jalmari and Rauha Ahokas Foundation, the European Commission (EURO-BLCS, Framework 5 award QLG1-CT-2000-01643), NARSAD: Brain and Behavior Research Fund, the igrid Jusélius Foundation, DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), and US National Institutes of Health (NIMH) (5R01MH63706:02).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.