Faculty Articles
Effects of Three Interview Factors on the Validity of Alcohol Abusers' Self-Reports
ORCID
0000-0001-7705-3993
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse
ISSN
0095-2990
Publication Date
1981
Abstract
Using 54 outpatient male court-referred alcohol abusers as subjects, this study investigated the effects of three different interview factors--interview setting (group vs individual), method of interview administration (self vs other), and question type (alcohol vs nonalcohol vs demographic)--on the validity of alcohol abusers' self-reports of verifiable life events. Overall, subjects gave relatively valid self-reports, and when answers were invalid they were more often overreported than underreported. Of the three question types, demographic questions were answered the most validly. The validity of subjects' answers was not differentially affected by whether they answered the questions themselves or were interviewed by an experimenter. While subjects who were interviewed individually gave significantly more valid responses to questions than subjects interviewed in a group setting, the difference (5%) was not great. Given that the overall validity rate was quite high for both groups, consideration must be given to whether it is worth the added time of interviewed subjects individually as compared to interviewing subjects in groups and settling for a slightly lower rate of validity.
DOI
10.3109/00952998108999127
Volume
8
Issue
2
First Page
225
Last Page
237
NSUWorks Citation
Sobell, L. C.,
Sobell, M. B.
(1981). Effects of Three Interview Factors on the Validity of Alcohol Abusers' Self-Reports. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 8(2), 225-237.
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_facarticles/48
