The Dangers of Self-Report

Easily one of the most popular and convenient methods of data collection in psychology testing is a self-report questionnaire. Self-reports are cost and time effective, relatively easy to apply to a large sample, and have the added benefit of being able to measure constructs that are more difficult to obtain with behavioral measures. The majority of self-reports undergo reliability and validity testing to ensure consistent results over time as well as that the test measures what it is intended to measure. However advantageous the self-report methodology seems, there is a definite downside to its employment.

One issue of using a self-report questionnaire is response biases. No matter the evidence that is being utilized to assess a question, an individual may still be biased toward one answer over the other(s).

Another issue is the honesty of the response. Some participants may be more honest and open with their answers than others and this can differ based on a number of things including image management and personality.

Moreover, issues such as the lacking of introspective ability and understanding can arise using self-reports. In some aspects, we are all unable to assess ourselves completely accurately. Introverts are more likely to possess introspection skills than extroverts, which can cause a misrepresentation of data unless you control for it. Also, some participants may not fully grasp the meaning of a question and therefore will not answer accurately, also skewing the results.

Finally, self-report measures produce ordinal data, which may tell you the order units are ranked in but lacks the ability to tell you the differences between the units. This can cause problems due to the fact that these tests can cause assumptions to be made that are not necessarily met when using ordinal data and therefore incorrect inferences can be made resulting in questionable findings.

All these complications can call into question the reliability and validity of self-report questionnaires. However, despite these problems, it is my belief that self-report tests will become increasingly more popular due to their overall convenience. I also believe that researchers will find a way to circumvent these issues in the future. *

*One way to circumvent the issue of response biases is to “reverse” half of the questions so that the construct is scored using positive and negative responses, thereby eliminating any bias.