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ANNEX D: QUESTIONNAIRE CHANGES FOR THE 2006 SURVEY

D.1 The main refinements and additions which were made to the questionnaire for the 2006 survey were as follows:

• the existing question on self-reported general health was changed to harmonise with the comparable measure from the Scottish Health Survey
• for the questions focusing on positive and negative influences on mental health, the preamble was altered slightly to focus more specifically on the respondents' own experiences. Additionally, the questions were left open-ended to speed up the coding process and reduce the number of responses coded as 'other'. The original precode lists for these questions formed the basis of the frames used for coding but, as in 2004, some of the response categories were refined
• the GHQ12 was supplemented with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale ( WEMWBS). Whereas the former is designed to detect possible psychiatric morbidity, WEMWBS is a new measure designed specifically to assess mental wellbeing
• in the questions which ask respondents about their experience of specific mental problems, post-traumatic stress disorder was added to the lists of options
• new questions were added to explore whether people who have experienced a mental health problem have told others about that problem and whether they have ever chosen to avoid a social event because of the way they think people will treat them
• in the section on recovery from mental ill-health, two new questions were added focusing on factors that hinder recovery and messages of recovery received from a) health professionals and b) friends/family
• in the section on sources of information on mental ill-health, the item measuring awareness of specific campaigns, initiatives and promotional activity was extended to include those initiatives which had come on stream since 2004
• in the vignettes section, a new option - the circumstances in which Robert/Shona lives - was added to the lists of possible causes of the symptoms depicted
• Additionally, the question concerning whether Robert/Shona should have the same rights as other people was rephrased as it was felt that the original version was likely to be affected by social desirability bias, that is, the tendency for survey respondents to give answers which they deem to be socially acceptable
• finally a new question was added to the demographic section of the questionnaire to record household composition

D.2 Of course, these refinements and changes had significant implications for the length of the questionnaire. To keep the interview to the target length of 30 minutes, a number of other questions were deleted. For the most part the deleted items were questions which had proven to be of limited analytical value in 2004. The questions focused on:

• activities which people with a disability have difficulty managing on their own
• attendance at social/leisure events and community/representative groups
• the nature of any undiagnosed mental health problems experienced by respondents
• situations in which respondents with personal experience of mental ill-health have chosen not to disclose their problem.
• respondents' perceptions of media portrayal of people with mental health problems
• the perceived nature of the messages being conveyed by promotional materials

D.3 Cuts were also made to the demographic section of the questionnaire. In particular, the decision was taken not to classify respondents' socio-economic status using NS- SEC²³ which meant that the various questions from which this measure is derived could be deleted.

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