Self-Reports in Behavioural Clinical Settings

Introduction

Self-reports have constituted basic procedures of psychological assessment. Self-reports have been used with different goals either in traditional or behavioural assessments. In the first case, the goal pursued is the study of the underlying personality. In the second, the goal to be reached is the measurement of manifested behaviour (verbalized).

Self-reports are widely employed assessment methods, consisting of the collection of verbal information provided by an individual about him or herself. Therefore, it can be considered as a variation of self-observation techniques. Information such as motor responses (avoidance behaviour, tobacco consumption, etc.), psycho-physiological responses (tachycardia, sweating, etc.) and cognitive responses (sadness, insecurity, etc.) can be collected through self-reports. It is also the only available method to collect information about cognitive responses (for a review see Fernández-Ballesteros, ...