How the quality of self-reports in stress research could be enhanced by using reference groups and anchoring vignettes

在大多数关于工作压力（工作和组织心理学的中心话题）的研究中，研究人员要求受访者报告自己经历了多少压力源。尽管这种自我报告受到了批评，但在压力研究中继续使用自我报告是有充分理由的（实践的和理论的）。然而，这种自我报告应该在方法上尽可能合理，以反驳这些批评。通过研究如何利用其他研究领域的见解来改进对压力源的评估，帮助实现这一目标是拟议项目的三个研究的目标。第一项研究的目的是显示受访者填写压力源问卷是多么困难。（此外，本研究的信息将用于其他研究的设计。）第二项研究的目的是探索当人们填写压力问卷时比较过程的重要性，并测试参考组的说明是否有助于减少这种比较过程引起的不必要的误差方差。第三项研究的目标是采用锚定小图来测量应力。锚定小插曲在调查研究领域得到了发展，其背后的想法是，受访者阅读一个假设的人做出某种经历的简短案例描述，然后受访者对这个案例进行评分。这种锚定小插曲的评级显示了受访者如何解释压力源项目和量表标签，这种解释上的差异可以在进一步的分析中得到控制。因此，这项研究产生的结果应该有助于改进如何通过自我报告充分衡量压力源，这样的改进将使研究人员和从业人员都受益。此外，本项目获得的影响程度将暗示对压力源的主观看法有多重要，反过来，客观压力源情况有多重要，这将是关于压力主观性辩论的重要信息。

In most studies on stress at work (a central topic in work and organizational psychology), researchers ask respondents to report themselves how much they experienced certain stressors. Although such self-reports have been criticized, there are good reasons (practical and theoretical ones) to continue using self-reports in stress research. However, such self-reports should methodologically be as sound as possible to counter these criticisms. Helping to achieve this is the aim of the proposed project with its three studies by examining how insights from other research areas can be used for improving the assessment of stressors. The goal of the first study is to show how difficult it is for respondents to fill out a stressor questionnaire. (Furthermore, information from this study will be used for the design of the other studies.) The goal of the second study is to explore the importance of comparison processes when people fill out a stress questionnaire and to test whether instructions with reference groups can help to minimize unwanted error variance caused by such comparison processes. The goal of the third study is to employ anchoring vignettes for measuring stress. Anchoring vignettes have been developed in the field of survey research, and the idea behind them is that respondents read a short case description of a hypothetical person making a certain experience and that respondents then rate this case. This rating of the anchoring vignettes shows how respondents interpret stressor items and scale labels, and such differences in interpretation can be controlled in further analyses. Thus, the results generated by this research should help improving how stressors can adequately be measured via self-reports, and such an improvement would benefit researchers and practitioners alike. In addition, the magnitude of effects obtained in this project will imply how important the subjective view on stressors is and, conversely, how important the objective stressor situation is, which will be an important piece of information for the debate on the subjectivity of stress.