self reports

• • Methods of gathering data where participants provide information about themselves without interference from the experimenter.
• issues with validity

  • Issue of whether it is actually measuring what it intends to measure e.g. leading questions
  • Social desirability bias - Lie scale can be introduced, questions added as a “truth-detector”
• how to deal with issues with reliability

  • all questions should be consistently asking the same thing
  • Provide unambiguous predetermined answers so participant is clear about their response
  • Check for consistency over several occasions - give out questionnaire again
  • Inter-interviewer reliability so results can be compared - helps prevent subjectivity