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

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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.