title: Assessing individual differences: effects of responding to prior questionnaires on the substantive and psychometric properties of self-esteem and depression assessments.
abstract: It has become a common practice among psychological researchers to administer batteries of individual difference assessments to research participants, although little is known about whether the substantive and psychometric integrity of the questionnaires are maintained when they are administered after the subject has completed other instruments. The studies presented here consider these issues in relation to the assessment of self-esteem and depression. In the first study, college students responded to a self-esteem inventory (a) by itself (control group), (b) after one prior questionnaire, (c) after three prior questionnaires, or (d) after five prior questionnaires. Results indicated that filling out one or more questionnaires before an assessment of self-esteem resulted in reports of lower self-esteem relative to the control condition. Additional analyses revealed that filling out three or five prior questionnaires created lower reliabilities of subscale scores and lower estimates of concurrent validity between self-esteem and depression. When the effect of prior questionnaires on the General Self-Esteem subscale was examined, the aforementioned results were replicated, and the prior questionnaire treatment created heterogeneous variances across the experimental groups. The second study was designed as a replication of the first study, using an assessment of depression as the target questionnaire. These results revealed that reports of depressive symptomatology increased as the number of prior questionnaires increased. Again, the prior questionnaire treatment created heterogeneity of variance between the groups, but did not adversely affect its internal consistency.
authors.affiliation: University of Georgia, Athens 30602.
authors.forename: G H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Brody
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Stoneman
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Millar
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: McCoy
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D010556:Personality Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D012649:Self Concept