Two limitations concerning measurement are also noteworthy: that diagnoses were based on lay interviews and questionnaires rather than clinical assessments and that lifetime diagnoses and AOO reports were based on retrospective recall rather than prospective data. Concern about the first limitations is somewhat reduced by the good concordance with clinical diagnoses (Kessler et al., 2009c). The second limitation presumably reduced lifetime prevalence estimates (Moffitt et al., 2010; Patten, 2009), distorted AOO reports (Simon & von Korff, 1995), and could have biased estimates of predictive associations differentially across disorders depending on between-disorder differences in failure to recall lifetime occurrence and/or AOO. It would be very valuable to correct these limitations by replicating the complex analyses carried out here with long-term longitudinal data.
