![]() Nonetheless, self-report questionnaires are probably the best standardized tools that we have. The last problem with self-report measures is that even the ones that measure anger in state (being in an angry state right now) and trait (pervasive pattern of anger) dimensions, if not given when respondents are angry, may not reflect the true intensity of their emotions. Can we say that this student is angrier than the other students? Maybe, but what does it mean? Not much. Suppose that a student scored higher than everyone else in the class but her or his score did not reach the threshold of where anger is considered a problem. Moreover, many of these scales were originally developed to measure pathology. One might even hypothesize that athletes who scores high on a self-report measure are less likely to act out because they have some awareness of their anger. Does every person who scores high on anger scales get in fights? No. The second problem with anger scales is that a one-to-one correlation does not exist between measures on self-report inventories and behavior. And the problem is that on these tests, it is hard to tell when someone is lying if the person lies consistently throughout the answers. But, people lie for the fun of it, for the excitement of it, because they enjoy deceiving people, or for no reason at all. A common false assumption is that people lie only if they have a good reason to do so, if they have something to gain. This may surprise you, but some people who lie do not have a specific reason to do so. Some really do not pay attention to how they feel, and their self-report may not be based on reality. Some want to paint themselves in a positive light. ![]() Those with an acquiescence bias will give the answer that they believe the researcher wants. Subjects respond in the ways that they do on such tests for many reasons. For that matter, if a subject wants the researcher to draw a particular conclusion, he or she can make the test show those results. For an emotional state like anger, which many people recognize has a negative connotation subjects can provide answers that depict themselves in a favorable light. Subjects who take tests that are high in face validity can easily tell what the researcher is measuring. Face validity is the extent to which a test, on the face of it, measures what it is supposed to. ![]() The validity of a test is the extent to which it measures what it is supposed to measure. The first problem with anger inventories is that they tend to be high in what researchers call face validity. ![]() Many inventories were developed with the hope of capturing an emotion in a questionnaire. The hallmark of psychology research is the self-report inventory. Using psychological inventories to assess anger This is an excerpt from Anger Management in Sport by Mitch Abrams. ![]()
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