Posted by caraher on December 1, 2005, at 8:58:02
In reply to rut roh » Dinah, posted by TofuEmmy on November 30, 2005, at 17:07:35
Yeah, if you take it on a particularly bad day it will really skew the results. Basically what I've found is that it seems most reliable if I make an effort to think how I've felt over the past week, rather than at the moment I'm taking it. I would take it every Monday and kept the results in an Excel spreadsheet (kinda like the idea of the Babbleometer), which was helpful in tracking progress (especially when I felt I wasn't making any).
The claim that a variation of less than about 5 points is not significant also accords well with my own experience. Finally, it's obviously subjective just how "bad" a given score is. My high score was 65, so my standard of how "bad" things can feel is probably very different from that of any particular individual here. 50 may not be so bad compared to where you've been, while 40 might be fairly serious for someone else. The scores also depend on just how one tends to answer a given question; we may feel basically the same yet select different answers to the same question.
So I think it works better for self-monitoring than anything else; but still, if you have no idea whether you are "depressed" it's a good start.
poster:caraher
thread:583315
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051130/msgs/584125.html