Hm, I thought this would be quick and easy but I think it’s going to be short. I confess it’s partly here because one of my early papers was this:
Birtchnell, J., Evans, C., & Kennard, J. (1988). The total score of the Crown-Crisp Experiential Index: A useful and valid measure of psychoneurotic pathology. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 61, 255–266.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1988.tb02787.x
Details #
The CCEI evolved from the Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire and is/was a 48 item measure with scales with six scales: ANX, SOM, DEP, OBS, HYS, PHO, i.e. Anxiety, Somatisation/somatic problems, Depression, Obsessionality, “Hysteria”, and “Pho”.
It’s very much of its time though I continue to get citations to my paper as people continue to work on the ALSPAC study: Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children that used the CCEI and started in 1990-92 with follow-ups when the children were seven and eighteen years of age.
Predictably most psychometric exploration of the CCEI in most samples (and not just in English and from the UK) show only very weak fit between the scale design and any factor analysis. Some papers work hard to argue that the fit is fine enough … I guess I have some sympathy with that but have never argued that way for the CORE-OM! John Birtchnell, who died in 2022 had used the CCEI for some of his work and approached me as a very young psychiatric trainee to analyse his data. I was sceptical about the six scale scores utility for his work and he agreed and hence our paper which I think was the first to suggest just using the total score.
One thing that intrigued me about the CCEI was that it had a mix, as I remember it, of binary and three level responses across the items which Crown & Crisp hoped would balance out extreme and central response biases. It’s the only measure I have seen to do that. Whether those biases, which I think are well demonstrated to exist in the sense of being statistically significant in large enough samples, are a substantial contribution to measure scores, and whether this trick removes their effects in aggregate data, has, as far as I know, never been explored.
Interestingly, I can find no electronic copy of the measure online nor on my hard discs and my old paper information about measures is in London and I’m in the Alps now so I may add more about the CCEI later. However, I think it’s of historical interest really.
Try also #
Bias
Response/responding bias
Chapters #
Not mentioned in the OMbook.
Online resources #
None that I could find nor ever likely I think.
Dates #
First created 19.iv.24.
