What is it like to be the object of research? On meaning making in self-report measurement and validity of data in psychotherapy research

Abstract

In this paper, we argue (1) that self-report measurement is meaningful. ‘John’, a patient-participant in psychotherapy research, is presented to illustrate meaning-making processes in self-report measurement. We show that neglecting individual scoring processes might lead to invalidation of data. Therefore, (2) we argue that it is vital to actively validate data collected by validated measures. As numerical data themselves do not ‘show’ whether they are valid, the story of data collection must be taken into account. Therefore, we argue that mixing qualitative and quantitative methods is necessary for meaningful measurement, which is paramount to progress in psychological science and practice.

Keywords

• Self-report measurement
• PROMs
• Validity
• Meaningful measurement
• Meaning making
• Scoring processes