Table 1.
Item selection order by short-form creation strategy
| Item | Selection method |
Two-stage (Locator—“I felt depressed”) |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E(Info) Normal |
E(Info) Logistic |
E(Info) Uniform |
Max R |
Min avg CAT rank |
Never | Rarely | Sometimes | Often | Always | |
| I felt unhappy* | 2 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 7 | ||
| I felt discouraged about the future | 9 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 4 | ||||
| I felt disappointed in myself | 10 | 11 | 11 | 5 | 6 | 3 | ||||
| I felt sad* | 8 | 8 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 2 | ||||
| I felt emotionally exhausted | 14 | 15 | 20 | 6 | 10 | 5 | ||||
| I felt depressed* | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| I felt pessimistic | 23 | 23 | 25 | 7 | 22 | 6 | ||||
| I felt lonely | 20 | 20 | 24 | 12 | 14 | |||||
| I felt that my life was empty | 13 | 13 | 14 | 25 | 11 | |||||
| I found that things in my life were overwhelming |
12 | 12 | 12 | 8 | 7 | 7 | ||||
| I had trouble feeling close to people | 22 | 22 | 23 | 11 | 21 | |||||
| I felt like a failure* | 3 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 4 | |
| I withdrew from other people | 17 | 18 | 19 | 15 | 18 | |||||
| I felt that I had nothing to look forward to* |
7 | 7 | 6 | 20 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | |
| I felt that I was not needed | 16 | 16 | 17 | 22 | 19 | |||||
| I felt that I was to blame for things | 19 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | |||||
| I felt helpless* | 5 | 4 | 4 | 23 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | |
| I felt that I was not as good as other people |
26 | 27 | 27 | 18 | 26 | |||||
| I felt worthless* | 4 | 2 | 3 | 24 | 12 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| I had trouble making decisions | 21 | 21 | 21 | 10 | 20 | |||||
| I felt that nothing could cheer me up |
11 | 9 | 8 | 26 | 13 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | |
| I felt that nothing was interesting | 18 | 17 | 15 | 19 | 17 | |||||
| I felt guilty | 28 | 28 | 28 | 13 | 25 | |||||
| I felt that I wanted to give up on everything |
15 | 14 | 13 | 27 | 23 | 7 | ||||
| I felt hopeless* | 6 | 3 | 2 | 14 | 15 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| I felt ignored by people | 25 | 26 | 26 | 21 | 27 | |||||
| I felt upset for no reason | 24 | 25 | 22 | 16 | 24 | |||||
| I felt I had no reason for living | 27 | 24 | 16 | 28 | 28 | 7 | ||||
| Cronbach’s Alpha for eight-item short forms |
.953 | .953 | .954 | .954 | .948 | .947 | .954 | .954 | .954 | .950 |
Note: Items are ordered by mean category threshold values (from low to high levels of depressive symptoms). Numbers in bold indicate top eight items
*
Indicates PROMIS short-form items. E(Info) Normal: Expected information using normal weighting, E(Info) Logistic: Expected information using logistic weighting, E(Info) Uniform: Expected information using uniform weighting, Max R: Maximum correlation with full-bank score, Min Avg CAT Rank: Minimum average CAT presentation rank. Two-Stage: A locator item (“I felt depressed.”) followed by five different branches of seven items each depending on the responses to the locator item