SC20.1-SC20.3 This parallel between panic attacks and anger attacks was followed through in the screener section, where the three diagnostic stem questions for IED was placed directly after the stem questions for panic.

IED3. Note that the introductory question in the section is tailored to the profile of stem questions endorsed in the SC20 series. Note, too, that this introductory question is purposefully quite long. This was done to signal to the respondent that there is a change in topic from the previous section, to provide context for the questions to follow in this section, and to give the respondent time to reorient his or her thinking to this new topic before having to answer the first question.

IED5-5b. Pilot testing showed that respondents with IED are loathe to admit to having attacks "for no good reason," but that they will admit that their attacks sometimes occurred with minimal provocation. The stronger version of the question (IED5) was purposefully placed first to create a situation psychologically similar to the one created by the "door in the face" technique; that is, a situation in which the respondent is first presented with an extreme request that he is expected to reject and then with less extreme requests that are more likely to be endorsed than in the absence of the initial extreme request by virtue of the fact that they are perceived as less extreme because of their juxtaposition to the extreme request (Cialdini et al., 1975).

IED7. A number of the questions in this section, IED7 being the first of them, ask for a frequency response even though the diagnostic criterion only requires the symptom to occur rarely. This was done purposefully to reduce psychological barriers to admitting these symptoms. The well-known Conflict Tactics Scale uses the same technique of asking about frequency of extreme acts of violence (e.g., frequency of beating one's wife) with response scales that have a very long upper tail even though a response of even one time is coded as being clinically significant (Straus et al., 1996). Methodological studies carried out by Norbert Schwarz have shown that this technique leads to higher, and presumably more accurate, reports (Schwarz & Oyserman, 2001).

IEC26-33.1 These questions are identical to those included at the end of each diagnostic section. See commentary in the Depression section for a discussion of these questions.

Cialdini R, Vincent J, Lewis S, Catalan J, Wheeler D & Darby B (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: the door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31:206-215.

Straus MA, Hambly SL, Boney-McCoy S & Sugarman DB (1996). The revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2): Development and Preliminary Psychometric Data. Journal of Family Issues 17(3):283-316.