The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Assessing health risk behaviors among adolescents: the effect of question wording and appeals for honesty.
To understand how methodological factors influence prevalence estimates of health-risk behaviors obtained from surveys, we examined the effect of varying question wording and honesty appeals while holding other aspects of the surveys constant. ⋯ When population, setting, questionnaire context, mode of administration, and data-editing protocols are held constant, differences in question wording can create statistically significant differences in some prevalence estimates. Varying honesty appeals does not have an effect on prevalence estimates.