Anonymous online study on dreams and depression

[Researcher]

I've completed the 3 part survey and in the first part I found myself having to choose between two of the options neither of which was right as it was somewhere in between.

Also was a little disappointed in the dream section was expecting to have to give a resume of what I had dreamt but was just asked about the mood of the dream.

FYI The dream before I awoke was I was at a party with mum and dad, I lived there but the house wasn't where I actually live it was an imaginary house and all the guests were my mum and dad's age none of my age and I didn't know any of them there was lots of mundane chat and I awoke before anything interesting happened.

Hi OldMike,

Thank you so much for doing the study - I'm so grateful for you taking the time.

It is tricky using these questionnaires, I agree. I have used standard ones wherever possible, for two reasons - they have been tested on lots of people to check that they are reasonably accurate; and they've been used by other researchers, so if I use the same ones it's easier for me to compare my results to theirs. But as you quite rightly pointed out, they are not a perfect tool, because most of us don't score our feelings in that way.

One of the things I have learned during my course is that psychology is not an exact science and so it's important to be humble when interpreting results. Over time, with different studies, we can start to build up a picture that is helpful for understanding something (like depression) and coming up with treatments... but we should always be cautious about making big claims from a single study.

I would also have loved to have the option for people to record their dreams. One of the nice things for me has been hearing anecdotally from people who I know who have taken part about their dreams - thank you for sharing yours. Unfortunately, the method for analysing descriptions needs two researchers, who score them independently and compare their ratings, and I'm doing this project by myself. In case you're interested, other studies have looked at the content of dreams and found that for people with depression they tend include more self-critical elements.

I hope that gives a bit more context. Its really useful for me to hear from people about how they found doing the study, because I can bear this in mind when I do future research.

Sarah