Review articleAssessment of factors affecting the validity of self-reported health-risk behavior among adolescents: evidence from the scientific literature
Section snippets
Factors affecting validity
Two major theoretical perspectives have been advanced to explain the source of validity problems that may emerge with some self-reported data. The cognitive perspective focuses on the mental processes underlying self-reported data and attributes validity problems to inaccuracies arising from comprehension, recall, and other cognitive operations. The situational perspective focuses on validity problems that arise from factors related to social desirability and interviewing conditions. These two
Methods
To find relevant articles, we searched Medline, ERIC, Sociological Abstracts, and PsycINFO using the following keywords: “validity,” “reliability,” “self-report,” “self-assessment,” “alcohol use,” “drug use,” “tobacco use,” “injury,” “violence,” “suicide,” “diet,” “nutrition,” “physical activity,” and “sexual behavior.” We limited the searches to adolescent populations. We also cross-referenced the reference sections of relevant articles already in our possession and obtained through the
Cognitive factors
Reports of alcohol and other drug use usually are obtained for one or more reference periods (e.g., 1 month, 1 year) as well as for the individual’s lifetime. Problems in the retrieval of the required information can occur because behaviors have to be both recalled and placed within the appropriate time period. The difficulty of this task is increased because respondents may be unable to remember events that occurred while they were under the influence of abused substances.
To the extent that
Discussion
As our review of the literature has shown, self-reports of each of six types of health-risk behaviors are affected by both cognitive and situational factors. These factors, however, do not threaten the validity of self-reports of each type of behavior equally. Further, each type of behavior differs in terms of the extent to which it can be validated by an objective measure.
This review has several limitations. First, although we attempted to be systematic and thorough in our literature search,
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