Informant reports: A cheap, fast, and easy method for personality assessment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2005.03.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Despite widespread agreement that multi-method assessments are optimal in personality research, the literature is dominated by a single method: self-reports. This pattern seems to be based, at least in part, on widely held preconceptions about the costs of non-self-report methods, such as informant methods. Researchers seem to believe that informant methods are: (a) time-consuming, (b) expensive, (c) ineffective (i.e., informants will not cooperate), and (d) particularly vulnerable to faking or invalid responses. This article evaluates the validity of these preconceptions in light of recent advances in Internet technology, and proposes some strategies for making informant methods more effective. Drawing on data from three separate studies, I demonstrate that, using these strategies, informant reports can be collected with minimal effort and few monetary costs. In addition, informants are generally very willing to cooperate (e.g., response rates of 76–95%) and provide valid data (in terms of strong consensus and self-other agreement). Informant reports represent a mostly untapped resource that researchers can use to improve the validity of personality assessments and to address new questions that cannot be examined with self-reports alone.

Introduction

Assessing personality is a challenging task that cannot be accomplished thoroughly with a single method. Yet personality researchers frequently do just that, relying exclusively on self-reports. Indeed, an analysis of all studies published in the Journal of Research in Personality (JRP) in 2003 revealed that of the 45 studies in which personality was assessed, 44 of them (98%) used self-reports and for 31 of these (70%) this was the only measure collected. In contrast, only 24% of the JRP studies collected informant reports (i.e., ratings of the targets by well-acquainted others, such as friends, spouses, or co-workers). The purpose of this paper is to encourage researchers to increase the number of methods they routinely use by adding informant reports to their battery of research instruments.

In addition to collecting informant reports for the sake of multi-method assessment, many researchers have provided compelling arguments for exploiting this rich source of information (e.g., Costa and McCrae, 1988, Craik, 1986, Craik, 1996, Craik, 2000, Hofstee, 1994, Hogan, 1998, John and Robins, 1993, Kenny, 1994, Kolar et al., 1996, McCrae et al., 1998, Oltmanns et al., 1998, Paulhus and Morgan, 1997, Paulhus, 2005, Watson et al., 2000). In fact, informant reports are an ideal complement to self-reports because self-reports provide a view of personality from the inside (i.e., identity) whereas informant reports provide a view of personality from the outside (i.e., reputation; Hogan, 1998). Perhaps the most important feature of informant reports is that, unlike self-reports, they can be aggregated across observers to obtain a more reliable assessment of personality (Block, 1961, Hofstee, 1994).

In light of these obvious and compelling benefits, Why are informants not more widely used? Given that the benefits are evident, the reasons must lie in the costs, or in researchers’ preconceptions of the costs. What are the perceived costs of collecting informant reports? It is difficult to address this question empirically, but having spoken to numerous researchers about this issue, it seems that the reluctance to use informant reports is driven by four widely held preconceptions (Table 1). First, researchers seem to believe that collecting informant reports is time consuming. Second, many researchers cannot afford the monetary costs they assume would be associated with collecting informant reports. Third, researchers anticipate low cooperation on the part of informants. Fourth, researchers worry that because informants frequently complete their ratings outside of the laboratory (e.g., from home), the lack of control over the ratings will adversely affect the quality of the data, perhaps even leading to fake responses. In my experience, all four of these beliefs are unfounded. Informant methods are much easier and more successful than many researchers believe.

After learning how easy the procedure is and how willing informants are to cooperate, many initially skeptical colleagues have incorporated informant reports into their studies. Therefore, I suspect that if more researchers were convinced that their preconceptions are groundless, many of them would collect informant reports and personality research would be less one-dimensional. This would not only improve the validity of personality research, but also allow researchers to address new questions that cannot be examined with self-reports alone. In this paper I evaluate these preconceptions in light of new technological advances, describe the strategies I have learned for addressing them, and present results from three studies that implemented these strategies.

Section snippets

Preconception 1: Informant reports are time consuming

Perhaps the biggest reason for our field’s over-reliance on self-reports is that they are seen as far more convenient than any other method. A corollary of this belief is that any other method, including informant reports, would be a strain on either the researchers or the participants. However, recent technological advances have increased the practicality and efficiency of many methods of data collection, including informant reports.

Specifically, the proliferation of the Internet and e-mail

Three illustrative data sets

In this section I describe the procedure my collaborators and I have used for collecting informant reports. Study 1, described in Vazire and Gosling (2004), consisted of 80 adults and their informants across the US. Studies 2 (Vazire, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2004) and 3 (Vazire & Mehl, 2004) consisted of students recruited at the University of Texas at Austin and their informants. Although the procedures varied slightly across the three studies, I describe the general procedure here noting any

Conclusion

The perplexing pattern of over-reliance on self-reports in the field of personality research seems to be based, at least in part, on the outdated belief among researchers that other methods of assessing personality place a significant burden on the researcher or participants. Unfortunately, this belief has led many researchers to overlook informant reports, which provide rich, valid assessments of personality at minimal cost to the researcher. In their cost-benefit analyses of informant

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this article was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants MH64527-01A1 and MH52391, and National Science Foundation Grant 0422924. I am grateful to Sam Gosling, Cindy Chung, Katie Larsen, Pranjal Mehta, and Erik Noftle for their helpful comments on this paper and to Sam Gosling, Matthias Mehl, Jamie Pennebaker, and Jason Rentfrow for making their data available.

References (32)

  • J.A. Johnson

    Ascertaining the validity of individual protocols from Web-based personality inventories

    Journal of Research in Personality

    (2005)
  • J. Block

    The Q-sort method in personality assessment and psychiatric research

    (1961)
  • P.T. Costa et al.

    Personality in adulthood: A six-year longitudinal study of self-reports and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1988)
  • K.H. Craik

    Personality research methods: An historical perspective

    Journal of Personality

    (1986)
  • K.H. Craik

    The objectivity of persons and their lives: A noble dream for personality psychology?

    Psychological Inquiry

    (1996)
  • K.H. Craik

    Personality psychology: Methods of study

  • R.C. Fraley

    How to conduct behavioral research over the Internet: A beginner’s guide to HTML and CGI/Perl

    (2004)
  • S.D. Gosling et al.

    A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (2002)
  • S.D. Gosling et al.

    Should we trust Web-based studies? A comparative analysis of six preconceptions about Internet questionnaires

    American Psychologist

    (2004)
  • W.K.B. Hofstee

    Who should own the definition of personality?

    European Journal of Personality

    (1994)
  • R. Hogan

    Reinventing personality

    Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology

    (1998)
  • O.P. John et al.

    Determinants of interjudge agreement on personality traits: The Big Five domains, observability, evaluativeness, and the unique perspective of the self

    Journal of Personality

    (1993)
  • O.P. John et al.

    The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives

  • D.A. Kenny

    Interpersonal perception: A social relations analysis

    (1994)
  • D.W. Kolar et al.

    Comparing the accuracy of personality judgments by the self and knowledgeable others

    Journal of Personality

    (1996)
  • R.R. McCrae et al.

    A five-factor theory of personality

  • Cited by (259)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text