Questionnaires

Questionnaires are assessment instruments that provide respondents with a set of questions to obtain information about either the respondent or another individual. Importantly, questionnaire measures are beneficial for a number of reasons. Questionnaire measures offer ease of usage, as well as the ability to obtain large quantities of information efficiently, either by providing a battery of questionnaires to a single respondent and/or by administering a questionnaire to a wide set of respondents. In addition, administering questionnaires requires relatively lower costs than other types of empirical inquiry, such as observational assessment or experimental manipulation. This entry examines psychometric properties of questionnaire measures as well as issues of developmental significance such as the use of cross informants.