Self-Report Methods in Psychology: Questionnaires and Interviews

Offered on a list, “to think for themselves” was chosen by 61.5% of people. Asked the same question with no list, only 4.6% said it. That gap is the central problem of self-report methods in psychology.

Most of what psychologists want to know happens inside people’s heads. Attitudes, memories, stress, love, prejudice and personality cannot be watched directly, so the simplest way to find out about them is to ask. That is what self-report methods do. They sit behind some of the best-known research in psychology, from the stress scales used in health psychology to the newspaper “love quiz” that launched research on adult attachment, and behind every personality test you have ever taken.

Asking is not as simple as it sounds, though. The answer someone gives depends on how the question is worded, what answers are offered, who is asking, and whether the honest answer is an embarrassing one. Self-report is the opposite of observational techniques, which watch what people do rather than asking them, and the two are often used together because each covers the other’s blind spot. How far a self-report can be trusted comes down to its reliability and validity.

This guide covers everything the AQA A level specification asks for under “self-report techniques” and “questionnaire construction”, with real examples throughout: the types of questionnaire and interview, open and closed questions, how to write good questions and design an interview, the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and how to answer exam questions on them. There is also a practice quiz for spotting badly written questions.

What Are Self-Report Methods in Psychology?

Self-report methods in psychology are research methods in which participants provide information about themselves, by answering questions about their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, behaviour or experiences. The researcher does not measure the behaviour directly: they rely on what the participant says or writes. The AQA specification lists two self-report techniques, “Questionnaires; interviews, structured and unstructured” (AQA, 2015).

The two techniques differ in how the questions are delivered:

• Questionnaires are a set of written questions that participants answer themselves, on paper or online. No researcher needs to be present.
• Interviews are questions asked face to face, by phone or by video call, with the interviewer recording the answers. A structured interview follows a fixed list of questions in a fixed order. An unstructured interview is closer to a guided conversation. Many real studies use a semi-structured interview, which sits in between.

Psychological tests and scales, such as personality inventories and stress scales, are also self-report measures, because the score comes from the person’s own answers. When exam questions refer to “self-report”, they usually mean any of these.

Self-Report as a Method and as a Technique

Self-report can be a whole study or one part of a larger one. A survey of 1,000 teenagers about their sleep and social media use is a self-report study from start to finish. Often, though, a questionnaire or interview is how another method measures its variables. In an experiment, the dependent variable might be a mood questionnaire filled in after the manipulation. In a correlational study, both co-variables might be questionnaire scores, such as stress and number of illnesses. A case study almost always includes long interviews with the person and the people around them.

This matters in exams. If a question describes an experiment in which anxiety was measured with a questionnaire, the study is an experiment, and the questionnaire is the technique used to collect the data. Both descriptions are correct: one describes the design and the other describes how the data were gathered.

Types of Self-Report Methods Compared

The three main types of self-report method are questionnaires, structured interviews and unstructured interviews, and they differ mainly in how much structure they have. At one end, a questionnaire gives every participant exactly the same written questions and often the same fixed answers. At the other, an unstructured interview lets the conversation go wherever the participant takes it.

The choice depends on what the research is for. If the aim is to measure something in a large group and compare scores, such as how stressed nurses are compared with teachers, the structure of a questionnaire is an advantage. If the aim is to understand an experience in depth, such as what it is like to care for a parent with dementia, the freedom of an unstructured interview is what makes it valuable. The difference maps closely onto the difference between quantitative and qualitative data.

Questionnaires in Psychology

A questionnaire in psychology is a set of written questions that participants answer themselves, used to find out about their thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behaviour. Because no researcher has to be present, the same questionnaire can be given to hundreds or thousands of people, on paper, by post or online.

One of psychology’s best-known questionnaire studies shows how far that reach can go. Hazan and Shaver (1987) printed a “love quiz” in a local newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, and asked readers to post back their answers. They received over 1,200 replies within a week and analysed the first 620, from people aged 14 to 82. The key question was a single closed item: readers picked which of three short descriptions best matched how they felt in romantic relationships. Just over half (56%) chose the secure description, 25% the avoidant one and 19% the anxious/ambivalent one, proportions similar to those found for infants, which is why the study is central to research on attachment styles in adult relationships.

The same study also shows a questionnaire’s limits. Hazan and Shaver (1987) themselves pointed out that people who answer newspaper surveys tend to be slightly better educated than average and are more often women: of their 620 replies, 415 came from women. A questionnaire only hears from the people who choose to send it back, which is a form of volunteer bias covered in more detail in the guide to sampling methods.

Strengths of Questionnaires

• Large samples, cheaply and quickly. A questionnaire can be sent to many people at once and needs no trained researcher to administer it, so large and geographically spread samples are realistic.
• Easy to analyse. Closed questions produce numbers that can be totalled, averaged, graphed and tested statistically, and patterns across a large group are easy to see.
• Standardised and replicable. Every participant gets exactly the same questions in the same form, so another researcher can repeat the study and check the results.
• Less pressure to impress. With no researcher present, and especially when answers are anonymous, people may be more willing to give honest answers to personal questions than they would be face to face.

Weaknesses of Questionnaires

• Social desirability bias. People may give the answer that makes them look good rather than the true one. This is covered in detail below.
• Response bias. Some participants tick the same kind of answer throughout, such as always agreeing (acquiescence), always choosing the middle option, or rushing through without reading the questions properly.
• No chance to clarify. If a participant misunderstands a question, nobody is there to explain it, and the researcher never finds out that the answer means something different.
• Low response rates and a biased sample. Many people never return a questionnaire, and those who do may differ from those who do not, for example by having stronger views on the topic.
• Limited depth. Closed questions force people into the researcher’s categories and cannot explain why someone feels as they do.

Open and Closed Questions in Psychology

Open and closed questions are the two basic kinds of question used in questionnaires and interviews. A closed question gives the participant a fixed set of answers to choose from and produces quantitative data. An open question lets participants answer in their own words and produces qualitative data. The AQA specification names “questionnaire construction, including use of open and closed questions” as a topic in its own right (AQA, 2015).

Closed Questions and Their Formats

Closed questions restrict the participant to answers the researcher has chosen in advance. They come in several formats, and exam questions often ask you to write one:

• Fixed choice (yes or no). “Have you ever been to a psychologist? Yes / No.” Produces nominal data: a count of how many people fall into each category.
• Checklist. “Which of these do you use to revise? Tick all that apply: flashcards, past papers, mind maps, videos.”
• Likert scale. A statement followed by a scale of agreement, usually five points from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Likert (1932) developed the approach to measure attitudes by adding together responses to many statements.
• Rating scale. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how stressed have you felt this week?” Also used to rate things such as how attractive a face is.

Likert scales and rating scales produce ordinal data: the numbers show order, but the gap between “agree” and “strongly agree” is not necessarily the same as the gap between “neutral” and “agree”. That affects which statistical test can be used, as explained in the guide to levels of measurement.

Strengths of closed questions: they are quick to answer, so more people finish the questionnaire, and they produce numerical data that can be compared across participants and analysed statistically. Weaknesses: they force people to choose from answers that may not fit, and give no sense of why the person answered as they did, which lowers validity.

Open Questions

Open questions have no fixed answers: participants write or say whatever they think. “How did you feel on your first day at secondary school?” or “What do you find most stressful about your job?” are open questions. They produce qualitative data in the participant’s own words.

Strengths of open questions: they produce rich, detailed answers, can reveal things the researcher never thought to ask, and let participants explain the reasons for their answers, which raises validity. Weaknesses: the answers take much longer to analyse, are hard to compare between people, and have to be interpreted by the researcher, which can introduce bias. They also take longer to answer, so some participants write very little.

Why the Question Format Changes the Answer

The question format changes the answers people give, not just how easy they are to analyse. Schwarz (1999) brought together a series of studies showing how strong this effect is:

• Asked what they considered “the most important thing for children to prepare them for life”, 61.5% of a representative sample chose “to think for themselves” when it appeared on a list. Only 4.6% gave that answer when there was no list and they had to think of it themselves (Schuman & Presser, 1981, reported in Schwarz, 1999).
• When German respondents were asked how much television they watched a day, only 16.2% reported more than two and a half hours when the answer options were low (starting at “up to half an hour”). When the options were high, 37.5% reported more than two and a half hours (Schwarz et al., 1985, reported in Schwarz, 1999).
• Patients at a psychosomatic clinic reported their symptoms as more frequent when the answer scale ran from “twice a month or less” to “several times a day” than when it ran from “never” to “more than twice a month”: 62% compared with 39% reported symptoms more than twice a month (Schwarz & Scheuring, 1992, reported in Schwarz, 1999).

People treat the answer options as clues. If the options go up to “more than two and a half hours”, participants assume that amount is normal and estimate their own viewing against it. The lesson for questionnaire design is that there is no neutral way to ask. Schwarz (1999) recommends asking frequency questions in an open format, such as “How many hours a day do you watch television? ___ hours per day”, so the options cannot suggest what counts as normal. His full paper, Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers, is freely available from the University of Southern California and is readable for A level students.

How to Write a Good Questionnaire

A good questionnaire asks clear, neutral questions that every participant understands in the same way, in an order that does not influence the answers, and is tested on a small group before it is used. Most marks in questionnaire design questions come from spotting and fixing four common faults in individual questions.

Avoid Leading Questions

A leading question suggests the answer the researcher wants. “Don’t you agree that homework is a waste of time?” pushes the participant towards agreeing. A neutral version would be “How useful do you find homework?” with a rating scale.

Even a single word can lead. In Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) car crash study, participants watched films of traffic accidents and then answered a questionnaire. Those asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” into each other estimated higher speeds than those asked with the verb “hit”. The study is usually taught as research on eyewitness memory, but it is also one of the clearest demonstrations of how questionnaire wording shapes the answers.

Avoid Double-Barrelled Questions

A double-barrelled question asks about two things at once but allows only one answer. “Do you enjoy your job and get on with your manager?” cannot be answered by someone who enjoys the job but dislikes the manager. The fix is to split it into two separate questions.

Avoid Jargon and Complex Wording

Jargon is technical language that participants may not understand. “Do you experience anhedonia?” means nothing to most people. “Do you find you no longer enjoy things you used to enjoy?” asks the same thing in everyday words. Double negatives cause the same problem: “Do you not disagree that…” takes too long to work out, and different people will work it out differently.

Avoid Ambiguous and Emotive Questions

An ambiguous question can be understood in more than one way. “Do you exercise regularly?” depends on what each participant thinks “regularly” means: one person means daily, another means once a month. “How many times did you exercise for at least 20 minutes in the last seven days?” removes the guesswork. Emotive questions, using loaded words such as “cruel” or “shocking”, create a similar problem by provoking a reaction rather than a considered answer.

Balance the Wording to Beat Acquiescence

Acquiescence bias is the tendency to agree with statements regardless of what they say. If every statement on a scale is worded so that agreeing gives a high score, a participant who simply agrees with everything will appear to score high on whatever is being measured.

This was a famous criticism of the F-scale, the questionnaire used to measure the authoritarian personality. Its statements were worded so that agreement always counted towards authoritarianism, and Bass (1955) asked in the title of his paper whether the scale was measuring “authoritarianism or acquiescence?”. The standard fix is to word about half the statements in the opposite direction, so that agreeing sometimes scores high and sometimes low. A participant who ticks “agree” to everything then ends up with a middling score rather than an extreme one.

Order, Filler Questions and the Pilot Study

Three final design decisions apply to the questionnaire as a whole:

• Question order. Start with easy, non-threatening questions and leave sensitive ones until later, once the participant is engaged. Earlier questions can also colour later ones, so questions on the same topic may need to be spread out.
• Filler questions. Unrelated questions mixed in with the real ones make it harder for participants to guess the aim of the study, which reduces demand characteristics.
• Pilot study. A small trial run with a few people similar to the real sample. It shows which questions are confusing, which answer options are missing, and how long the questionnaire takes, so problems can be fixed before the main study.

Try the practice quiz below. Each item is a question from an imaginary questionnaire, and your job is to spot the fault, or decide that the question is fine.

Interviews in Psychology

An interview in psychology is a self-report method in which a researcher asks questions in real time, face to face, by phone or by video call, and records the participant's answers. Interviews vary in how much structure they have, and the AQA specification names two types, structured and unstructured (AQA, 2015). Semi-structured interviews, a mix of the two, are also widely used in real research.

Structured Interviews

A structured interview is an interview in which every participant is asked the same questions, in the same order, in the same way. In effect it is a questionnaire read out loud. The interviewer does not add follow-up questions or change the wording, and the questions are often closed.

• Strengths: answers are easy to compare between participants because everyone had the same questions; the interview is easy to replicate; interviewers need less training; and interviewer bias is reduced because there is little room to influence the answers.
• Weaknesses: the interviewer cannot follow up an interesting answer or ask the participant to explain; the fixed format feels less natural, so participants may open up less; and because an interviewer is present, social desirability bias and interviewer effects are still possible.

Unstructured Interviews

An unstructured interview is an interview with no fixed list of questions. The researcher has a topic and perhaps a few opening questions, and then follows the participant's answers wherever they lead, much like a conversation. Some clinical interviews used by therapists work in a similar way.

• Strengths: the interviewer can ask the participant to expand or explain, so the answers are detailed and rich; the relaxed style builds rapport, which may make people more willing to talk about sensitive topics; and the researcher can discover things they had not thought to ask about, which gives the method high validity.
• Weaknesses: every interview is different, so answers are hard to compare and the study is hard to replicate; the qualitative data take a long time to analyse; interviewers need considerable skill and training; and the interviewer's own views can steer the conversation.

Semi-Structured Interviews

A semi-structured interview has a list of questions that every participant is asked, but the interviewer is free to add follow-up questions and change the order when an answer needs exploring. It combines some of the comparability of a structured interview with some of the depth of an unstructured one, which is why it is so widely used in real research, though it has a smaller share of each method's weaknesses too.

How to Design an Interview

Designing an interview means planning the questions, the interviewer, the setting and the recording in advance so the answers are as honest and as comparable as the research needs. The AQA specification calls this "design of interviews" (AQA, 2015), and exam questions often describe a planned interview and ask how it could be improved.

1. Write an interview schedule. A list of the questions to be asked, in order. In a structured interview, the schedule is followed word for word. In a semi-structured interview, it lists the main questions and possible follow-ups. The same rules as for questionnaires apply: no leading, double-barrelled, jargon-filled or ambiguous questions.
2. Choose and train the interviewer. Interviewer effects are changes in the answers caused by the interviewer's own characteristics or behaviour, such as their age, gender, ethnicity, tone of voice or reaction to an answer. Training interviewers to stay neutral, and using the same interviewer for everyone, reduces them.
3. Build rapport. Starting with neutral, easy questions helps participants relax before the more important or sensitive ones.
4. Choose a suitable setting. A quiet, private and comfortable place encourages honest answers. Participants are unlikely to discuss personal matters where they could be overheard.
5. Record the answers. Interviews are usually audio or video recorded, with the participant's consent, and then transcribed (written out word for word). Recording means the interviewer can concentrate on listening, and the transcript can be checked by more than one researcher.
6. Plan the analysis. Closed answers can be totalled and analysed statistically. Open answers are usually analysed by content analysis or thematic analysis, in which the researcher identifies categories or recurring themes in the transcripts.

Ethics matters more in interviews than in most other methods, because the participant is sitting with the researcher and may find it hard to refuse a question. Participants should be reminded that they can decline to answer any question and can stop at any time.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Self-Report Methods

The main strength of self-report methods is that they give direct access to things that cannot be observed, such as thoughts, feelings, attitudes and memories. The main weakness is that the answers depend on participants being willing and able to report accurately, and often they are not. Three problems come up again and again, and every self-report measure also has to prove it is reliable and valid.

Social Desirability Bias

Social desirability bias is the tendency for participants to give answers that make them look good rather than answers that are true. People under-report behaviour that is embarrassing or disapproved of, such as drinking, prejudice or cheating, and over-report behaviour that is admired, such as exercise, recycling or voting.

Tourangeau and Yan (2007) reviewed survey research on sensitive topics such as drug use, abortion and sexual behaviour, and concluded that misreporting about sensitive topics "is quite common". It is not random either: they found it depends on whether the person has something embarrassing to report, and on how the survey is designed. Respondents edit their answers to avoid embarrassment in front of an interviewer or consequences from other people.

Psychologists have three main ways of dealing with the problem:

• Anonymity. If nobody can link answers to the person, there is less reason to lie. This is one reason questionnaires can outperform interviews on sensitive topics.
• Lie scales. Questions designed to catch people presenting themselves too favourably. The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960) contains 33 true-or-false statements about small faults that almost everyone has, so someone who denies nearly all of them is probably trying to look good. Researchers can use a person's score to judge how far to trust their other answers.
• Careful wording. Questions that make the less flattering answer feel normal, rather than shameful, reduce the pressure to give the admired one.

Can People Report on Their Own Minds?

Even honest participants may not be able to give accurate answers, because people have limited insight into what drives their own behaviour. Nisbett and Wilson (1977) reviewed evidence that people are sometimes unaware of a stimulus that influenced them, unaware of their own response, or unaware that the stimulus caused the response. When asked to explain their behaviour, they do not look inwards and read off the real cause. Instead, they give the explanation that seems most plausible, which is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

This is a limit on self-report that no amount of good question design can fix. A questionnaire can accurately record what people believe about why they act as they do, which is not always the same as the real reason. It is one reason researchers combine self-report with observation, experiments or physiological measures.

Response Bias and Memory

Response bias is any consistent pattern in how someone answers that has nothing to do with the question, such as always agreeing (acquiescence), always choosing the middle option, or always choosing the extremes. Memory adds a further problem: questions about the past, such as "How many times did you feel anxious last month?", rely on recall, and people's estimates are easily influenced by the answer options, as the television study showed.

Reliability and Validity of Self-Report

Reliability and validity are the two tests every self-report measure has to pass. A questionnaire is reliable if it gives consistent results, which is usually checked with test-retest reliability: the same people complete it twice, a couple of weeks apart, and the two sets of scores should correlate strongly. For interviews, inter-interviewer reliability checks that two interviewers get the same answers from the same person.

A questionnaire is valid if it measures what it claims to measure. The main checks are face validity (does it look as though it measures the right thing?) and concurrent validity (do its scores match those from an established measure of the same thing?). The guide to validity in psychology covers each type in detail. Personality tests are a useful example of why these checks matter, as the article on MBTI test accuracy explains.

Examples of Self-Report Methods in Psychology Research

Self-report methods appear throughout the A level course, and knowing a few examples well gives you ready-made material for applying and evaluating the method. Four are especially useful.

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) is a questionnaire that measures stress from major life events. Holmes and Rahe (1967) gave each of 43 life events a score in "life change units", with death of a spouse scored highest, and a person's stress score is the total for the events they have experienced in the past year. It is a closed-question checklist, which makes it quick and easy to score.

It also shows how self-report measures date. Wallace et al. (2023) noted that the scale has been criticised as outdated and biased, citing items such as "Mortgage over $10,000" and "Wife begin or stop work", and produced an updated version with UK norms, based on ratings from 540 adults aged 18 to 84. The sources of stress guide covers the scale in the context of the stress topic.

The Hassles and Uplifts Scales

The Hassles and Uplifts Scales measure stress from minor everyday irritations and pleasures rather than major events. Kanner et al. (1981) gave them to a community sample of middle-aged adults once a month for ten months and found that the Hassles Scale predicted psychological symptoms better than life events scores did. The study is a good example of a self-report measure being tested for validity by comparing it with another self-report measure.

The Love Quiz and the F-Scale

Hazan and Shaver's (1987) newspaper love quiz, described above, is the classic example of a questionnaire reaching a large and varied sample cheaply, and of the volunteer bias that comes with it. The F-scale is the classic example of acquiescence bias, and of why balanced wording matters. Between them they cover most of the strengths and weaknesses an exam answer needs.

Ethical Issues in Self-Report Research

The main ethical issues in self-report research are confidentiality, informed consent, the right to withdraw and protection from psychological harm. Questionnaires and interviews often ask about personal matters, so the answers themselves can be sensitive data.

• Confidentiality and anonymity. Participants should be told how their answers will be stored and who will see them. The BPS Code of Human Research Ethics says participants should be told about the confidentiality and anonymity conditions of the data, including any exceptions, for example if they disclose something that must be reported (British Psychological Society, 2021).
• Consent. Written consent is the usual approach, but the BPS code notes that consent can be implied, for example by choosing to fill in an anonymous online survey on a non-sensitive subject (British Psychological Society, 2021).
• The right to decline. Participants should know they can refuse to answer any particular question, not only withdraw from the whole study (British Psychological Society, 2021).
• Protection from harm. Questions about difficult experiences such as bereavement, abuse or mental health can cause distress. Researchers should consider whether each question is necessary, and debrief participants with details of where to find support.

Research on sensitive topics also raises wider questions about how the findings might be used, which is covered in the guide to socially sensitive research.

How to Answer Exam Questions on Self-Report Methods

Exam questions on self-report methods usually ask you to identify, write, evaluate or improve a question or interview in a described study, so the marks go to applying your knowledge to the scenario rather than repeating definitions. A few habits pick up most of them.

• "Write a closed question" and "write an open question". Make the question fit the study in the stem and, for a closed question, include the answer options. A closed question with no options will usually not get the mark.
• "Explain one strength" or "one limitation". Name the point, explain why it matters, and link it to the study in the question. "Closed questions produce quantitative data" earns less than "closed questions would let the researcher compare stress scores between the nurses and the teachers statistically".
• "Suggest how the questionnaire could be improved". Look for leading, double-barrelled, ambiguous or jargon-filled questions, and suggest a pilot study, filler questions, anonymity or balanced wording, each tied to the problem it solves.
• "Structured or unstructured?" Justify the choice with the aim of the research: comparison and quantitative data point to structured; depth and understanding experiences point to unstructured.

A frequent mistake is to describe social desirability bias as a weakness of interviews only. It affects questionnaires too, though anonymity usually reduces it, which is a useful comparison point in evaluation questions. Another is to forget that self-report can be the technique used inside an experiment or correlation, as covered in the guide to types of experiment.

Conclusion

Self-report methods ask people to tell researchers about themselves, through questionnaires and through structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews. They are the most direct route to thoughts, feelings and experiences, and questionnaires in particular can reach large samples quickly and cheaply. Their weakness is that the answers are shaped by the questions, the answer options, the interviewer and the participant's wish to look good, and by the limits of what people know about their own minds. Good design reduces those problems: clear, neutral questions, the right balance of open and closed items, balanced wording, anonymity, a pilot study and trained interviewers. The best research then checks self-reports against other evidence rather than taking them at face value.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an example of a self-report method?

A personality test is a familiar example of a self-report method: you rate how well statements describe you, and your score comes entirely from your own answers. Other examples are a stress questionnaire such as the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, a mood diary, and a job or clinical interview.

Is a questionnaire a self-report method?

Yes. A questionnaire is one of the two self-report techniques named in the AQA specification, alongside interviews. It counts as self-report because participants provide the data about themselves, rather than a researcher observing or measuring their behaviour.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-report?

What is the difference between a structured and an unstructured interview?

In a structured interview, the interviewer reads the same prepared questions to every participant in a fixed order and does not add any. In an unstructured interview, there is no fixed list: the interviewer starts from a topic and follows the conversation. Structured interviews are easier to compare; unstructured ones give more depth.

What is a semi-structured interview in psychology?

A semi-structured interview uses a prepared list of core questions for every participant, but the interviewer can also ask follow-up questions and vary the order. It is a middle ground between structured and unstructured interviews and is one of the most widely used interview formats in qualitative psychology research.

What are the benefits of using both open and closed questions?

Using both gives a researcher numbers and reasons at the same time. Closed questions show how many people hold a view and allow statistical comparison; open questions explain why they hold it. A common design is a closed rating followed by "Please explain your answer".

What is a Likert scale in psychology?

A Likert scale is a closed question format in which participants rate how much they agree with a statement, typically on five points from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree". Scores on several statements are added together to measure an attitude. It produces ordinal data.

What is social desirability bias in research?

Social desirability bias in research is when participants give answers they think will be seen favourably rather than truthful ones, such as overstating how often they exercise. It reduces the validity of self-report data and is tackled with anonymity, careful wording and lie scales.

References

• AQA. (2015). AS and A-level Psychology specification (7181, 7182). AQA.
• Bass, B. M. (1955). Authoritarianism or acquiescence? Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51(3), 616–623.
• British Psychological Society. (2021). BPS code of human research ethics. British Psychological Society.
• Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24(4), 349–354.
• Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524.
• Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. H. (1967). The social readjustment rating scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11(2), 213–218.
• Kanner, A. D., Coyne, J. C., Schaefer, C., & Lazarus, R. S. (1981). Comparison of two modes of stress measurement: Daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4(1), 1–39.
• Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 22(140), 1–55.
• Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585–589.
• Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231–259.
• Schwarz, N. (1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54(2), 93–105.
• Tourangeau, R., & Yan, T. (2007). Sensitive questions in surveys. Psychological Bulletin, 133(5), 859–883.
• Wallace, D., Cooper, N. R., Sel, A., & Russo, R. (2023). The social readjustment rating scale: Updated and modernised. PLOS ONE, 18(12), e0295943.

Further Reading and Research

Recommended Articles

• Observational Techniques in Psychology: Types and Design
• Quantitative vs Qualitative Analysis
• The Big Five Personality Traits

Suggested Books

• Coolican, H. (2019). Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology (7th ed.). Routledge.
  • The standard research methods textbook for A level and undergraduate psychology, with detailed chapters on interviews, questionnaire design and the reliability and validity of psychological tests.
• Oppenheim, A. N. (1992). Questionnaire Design, Interviewing and Attitude Measurement (New ed.). Pinter.
  • A classic practical guide to writing questions, building attitude scales and running interviews, still widely used on university methods courses.
• Tourangeau, R., Rips, L. J., & Rasinski, K. (2000). The Psychology of Survey Response. Cambridge University Press.
  • An in-depth look at how people understand, remember and answer survey questions, and why their answers go wrong, for readers going beyond A level.

Recommended Websites

• AQA A-level Psychology (7182)
  • The official specification, past papers and mark schemes, including the research methods content on self-report techniques and questionnaire construction.
• British Psychological Society
  • The Code of Human Research Ethics, which sets out the rules on consent, confidentiality and the right to decline questions in survey and interview research.
• PubMed Central
  • Free full-text research papers, including the updated Social Readjustment Rating Scale, where you can see how a published questionnaire is built and tested.

Kathy Brodie

Kathy Brodie is an Early Years Professional, Trainer and Author of multiple books on Early Years Education and Child Development. She is the founder of Early Years TV and the Early Years Summit.

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To cite this article please use:

Early Years TV Self-Report Methods in Psychology: Questionnaires and Interviews. Available at: https://www.earlyyears.tv/self-report-methods-psychology-questionnaires-interviews/ (Accessed: 11 October 2026).