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The mystery of self-reporting: Why do people lie in surveys?
Self-report research plays a vital role in current psychological and social research. This approach not only allows participants to freely express their feelings and beliefs, but also allows for the collection of a wealth of data. However, the reliability and validity of self-reports are often questioned. Why do people choose to hide the truth when filling out surveys? This question has triggered the thinking of many researchers.
What is a self-report study?
Self-report research is a data collection method involving questionnaires, surveys, or polls that allows respondents to choose their own responses without external interference. This includes direct inquiry into participants’ feelings, attitudes, and beliefs in the form of questionnaires and interviews.
The validity of self-reporting faces many problems. Respondents may exaggerate symptoms or underreport actual conditions, or even misremember the material covered in the survey.
Pros and cons of questionnaires and interviews
Questionnaires and interviews are two forms of self-reporting. Questionnaires are usually in a structured written format, whereas interviews are oral questionnaires that record the respondents’ responses. Although these tools are effective in collecting large amounts of data, participant responses are not always trustworthy. Social desirability bias is a major problem with self-reporting, where respondents may answer questions in accordance with socially acceptable standards rather than reflecting their true self.
Open-ended vs. closed-ended questions
Open-ended or closed-ended questions can be used in questionnaires and interviews. Closed questions limit the response options and, while they provide quantifiable data, they do not provide deep insights. In contrast, open-ended questions allow respondents to answer in their own words, providing qualitative data that, while more difficult to analyze, can reveal what participants really think.
Use of rating scales
Common rating scales, such as the Likert scale, ask respondents to rate according to their degree of agreement. Although such a scale can provide participants with the intensity of their feelings, people often tend to choose neutral options. This has damaged the authenticity of the data to a certain extent.
In some cases, self-reports may be influenced by the participant's emotional state, with a tendency to respond more negatively when they are in a bad mood.
Reliability and validity of self-reports
Reliability refers to the consistency of a measurement instrument, while validity refers to whether a study measures something as it claims. The validity of self-reports is often questioned because participants may intentionally conceal or distort their responses. Although there are methods to assess these indicators, improving the reliability of self-reporting remains a challenge.
Pieces of Self-Report Studies
While self-report methods have many advantages, they also face several challenges. Exaggeration in responses, embarrassment of participants, social desirability bias, etc. may affect the reliability of the results. Furthermore, the lack of systematic differences in responses could also bias the results. Researchers must be careful when designing questionnaires and conducting interviews to avoid raising these issues.
ConclusionFaced with these challenges, researchers must ask: While we trust people's self-reported results, are there barriers and biases that cannot be ignored?
Self-reporting is an important data collection tool in psychology and social research, but its flaws warn us to use it with caution. We need to think deeply about under what circumstances can self-reported results be trusted? Perhaps, this is a topic that requires continuous exploration and deserves in-depth study and reflection by every researcher.
Against such a complex background, we should ask ourselves why people choose to hide the truth and how this affects the results of the investigation?
