This blogpost's sources are completely challenging my pre-existing assumptions about the methodological argument for using reverse-coded items on a survey. I might have to let the evidence totally change one of my scientific practices despite my intuitive feeling of what's "right." NEAT!
https://yannicmeier.de/2026/03/03/why-reversed-items-can-be-problematic-in-survey-research/
@grimalkina Not sure if this is relevant, but I have adopted the practice of avoiding negative cases in conditionals in my code, no matter which language I am using.
I almost always test a positive condition against true, for example:
if (system_is_inactive == false)
Is a red flag for me, and I rewrite as:
if (system_is_active)
Keeping conditions always with the same "direction" in my code reduces my cognitive load when reasoning about it later :-)
Cat Hicks
rhempel