Self-Reports (General)

Introduction

The self-report is a method for collecting data whose source is the subject's verbal message about him/herself. The self-report as an assessment method is supported not only by methodological standards but also by knowledge derived from basic psychology research in the fields of language, memory, learning and neuropsychology.

Self-reports provide information about thousands of events, from subjects' external and observable conditions (what subjects do, their circumstances, etc.) to his/her internal events (what they think or feel, their plans, opinions, attributions, desires, etc.). These types of events can refer to the past, to the present, or even to subjects' expectations about the future.

Self-reports are the most widely used methods in psychological assessment in all applied fields (clinical, health, educational, work & organizational, etc.), as well as being useful within all theoretical perspectives (behavioural, cognitive, phenomenological psychoanalytical, psychometric, constructivist, systemic). Therefore, self-reports can be taken and studied from several theoretical, practical, analytical and structural perspectives (for a review see Fernández-Ballesteros, 2002; Meyer et al., 2001).

In psychological assessment the self-report method is considered as an essential form of data-collection for three basic reasons: (1) due to the relative accuracy of the information provided by the subject about him/herself and about public events, and for its efficiency (compared to other methods) in relation to its cost and benefits; (2) as the preferred method in the assessment of subjective and private events (Hollon & Bemis, 1981); and (3) due to its empirically demonstrated value in the description, diagnosis and prediction of human behaviour (Schwartz, Park, Knauper & Sudman, 1998).

Although self-reports are considered to be acceptable methods for collecting data, it is well known that they have important sources of errors or response distortions, such as social desirability, faking, impression management, acquiescence, etc., which should be investigated and controlled (see: ‘Self-Report Distortions’ and ‘Self-Presentation Measurement’).

The consideration of the self-report in scientific psychology has evolved in accordance with the epistemological assumptions of different theoretical frameworks, and has constituted a central element in the mentalism-physicalism and functionalism-structuralism debates. Historically, it has been the central method in the study of conscientiousness (Wundt, 1902), the object of critical review from behavioural epistemology (Watson, 1920), rejected by the first and second generations of behaviourists (Zuriff, 1985), the object of reconceptualization by the third generation (Mischel, 1968; Staats & Fernández-Ballesteros, 1987), and also a fundamental instrument, both in the study of personality variables and constructs (Wiggins, 1973), and in that of a wide variety of psychosocial characteristics from psychopathological conditions to risk factors, from work performance to environmental attitudes, so that it is considered indispensable throughout the long process of evaluation and change (for a review, see Schwartz, Park, Knauper & Sudman, 1998; Fernández-Ballesteros, 2002).

All self-reports involve questions and answers (oral or written), so that, depending on the structure of these questions and answers, self-reports have several formats—interviews, questionnaires, scales, self-monitoring, think-aloud protocols and other specific instruments—for recording subjects' verbal messages about themselves. Nevertheless, in the literature, self-reports are commonly reduced to those that present a structured and standardized format in questions and answers, such as questionnaires, inventories and self-rating scales.

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