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Abstract
Aims: Educational research often relies on the self-reports of students to determine their ¿gradesIGPA for reasons including ease of administration, time constraints, IRB approval, and assumption of accuracy. The main purpose of this study was to determine the validity of student self-reports on their academic grades, and if the benefits outweigh the potential errors. Methods/ Results: Participants (n=415) were students in a suburban school in a large metropolitan dry in the Midwest. Two methods of self-reported grades were correlated with students actual transcript grades. Results showed fair amounts of correspondence (r=.60-.89), with actual grades being correlated at higher levels than self-reported grades.
Conclusion
Younger students and those with higher grades were more accurate reporters. Those with more diligent academic behaviors also demonstrated greater accuracy, and those with a vaguer sense of future goals demonstrated less accuracy. All results are discussed in the context of how valid are students self-reported grades for research purposes.
Keywords: self-report, validity, students, schools
Introduction
Self-reported measures are the most widely used method of collecting information about human behavior across various disciplines within the behavioral sciences, including sociology, psychology, education, and criminology (Schwartz & Beaver, 2015). Researchers use them to obtain pertinent information about participants own perceptions of constructs and the frequency of one's behavior. Within the behavioral science disciplines, it is the most common means of collecting information about participants (Robins, Farley & Krueger, 2007; Schwartz & Beaver, 2015). Selfreports are necessary to measure certain constructs, such as, selfesteem, personality, anxiety, or perceived support, as it is something perceived by the participant without an absolute way to quantify the information from an external source (Cole & Gonyea, 2010). These subjective constructs are referred to as attitudinal questions because they are internal to the person (Gonyea, 2005). Cole and Gonyea (2010) further noted that researchers have to rely on the participant to respond truthfully in attitudinal measures, due to not having another verifiable source of the information.
According to Gonyea (2005), a self-report question is referred to as "factual." Factual questions are objective and are used to evaluate characteristics, behavior, or circumstances (e.g., frequency of a behavior, performance on an exam, or grades/grade point average (GPA). Theoretically, factual data can be verified through a secondary source, such as student...