Self reporting - General Techniques of Assessment

Self reporting

Self-report techniques describe methods of gathering data where participants provide information about themselves without interference from the experimenter. A self-report study is a type of survey, questionnaire, or poll in which respondents read the question and select a response by themselves without researcher interference. A self-report is any method which involves asking a participant about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs and so on. Examples of self-reports are questionnaires and interviews or even diaries; self-reports are often used as a way of gaining participants' responses in observational studies and experiments. The main strength of self report methods are that they allow participants to describe their own experiences rather than inferring from observation. It is relatively simple way to collect data from many people quickly and at low cost.

Questionnaires are a type of self-report method which consists of a set of questions usually in a highly structured written form. Questionnaires can contain both open questions and closed questions and participants record their own answers. Interviews are a type of spoken questionnaire where the interviewer records the responses. Interviews can be structured whereby there is a predetermined set of questions or unstructured whereby no questions are decided in advance. Questionnaires and interviews are often able to study large samples of people fairly easy and quickly. They are able to examine a large number of variables and can ask people to reveal behaviour and feelings which have been experienced in real situations.

Questionnaires and interviews can use open or closed questions, or both. Closed questions are questions which provide a limited choice (for example, a participant's age or their favourite type of football team), especially if the answer must be taken from a predetermined list. Such questions provide quantitative data, which is easy to analyse. However these questions do not allow the participant to give in-depth insights. Open questions are those questions which invite the respondent to provide answers in their own words and provide qualitative data. Although these type of questions are more difficult to analyse, they can produce more in-depth responses and tell the researcher what the participant actually thinks, rather than being restricted by categories.

Rating scales : One of the most common rating scales is the Likert scale. A statement is used and the participant decides how strongly they agree or disagree with the statements.

Fixed-choice questions : Fixed-choice questions are phrased so that the respondent has to make a fixed-choice answer, usually 'yes' or 'no'.This type of questionnaire is easy to measure and quantify. It also prevents a participant from choosing an option that is not in the list.

Advantages

 Good Validity - you ask people directly and get their opinions and what they think.

 Lots of data both qualitative and quantitative and can be gathered quickly and cheaply from different groups and large sample.

 Can be easily replicated - reliable.

 Closed questions are quantifiable - they can be summarised into tables and graphs and compared.

 researchers can collect data regarding behaviors that cannot be observed directly

Disadvantages

 Fixed choice questions lack flexibility and forces people to answer - lowers validity.

 Social desirability bias

 Acquiescence - yes more than no or just agree.

 Set response.

 Question may be misunderstood - lowers reliability.

 Low response rate.

 Participants may try to give the ‘correct’ responses they think researchers are looking for (or deliberately do the opposite)

 Gathering information about thoughts or feelings is only useful if participants are willing to disclose them to the experimenter.

Using self report is the easiest and fastest way to collect data and it can be used to collect both types. However it can be subject to things like social desirability bias where people want to seem good and even leading questions in interviews. When using self-report it is important to use a variety of question types and no leading questions and make questions relevant to the topic. Although there may be high risks involving reliability, we cannot assume that all participants are liars. When good data is provided, self reporting provide big amounts of rich, good quality data in a way that techniques such as observation cannot. Despite their disadvantages, self-report techniques are extremely useful and provide an efficient method for gathering data.