According to its proponents, the interview has all the advantages of
self-report instruments and more. The same questions can be asked byeither method, so that the unique experiences of the individuals andtheir wide knowledge of themselves can be exploited. But in the inter -
view , these self-reports need not be taken at face value.
Perhaps the respondent does not seem to understand the ques -
tion—then it can be rephrased. Perhaps the answers are inconsistent—
then the inconsistency can be pointed out or the issue probed more sub -
tly . Perhaps the subject is squirming too much when certain topics are
mentioned. The canny interviewer, who is normally a trained profes -
sional, can use all these clues to qualify and evaluate the self-reported
information. For many researchers the professional interview is the goldstandard by which other personality assessments are judged. Farrell andRosenberg (1981), for example, administered self-report questionnairesto 500 subjects drawn to represent the population in general. But mostof the conclusions in the book they wrote on their studies are based oninterviews with 20 of these men (and their families). The authors sim-ply did not trust the self-reports to give them the complete and unvar-nished truth. (As it turned out, the interviews upheld the major conclu-sions of the self-report study , although many more complexities wereuncovered.)
Before deferring completely to the superiority of the interview ,
however, we should weigh some of its limitations. The results of eachinterview depend on human judgment, and even expert judgment is fal-lible. Interviews are typically conducted in 1 or 2 hours; at best theymay last 8–10 hours. The interviewer or the rater who interprets the in -
terview must formulate opinions about the person and his or her life on
that rather slim basis. What if the subject is nervous and unused to talk -
ing about himself? What if she is having an off day? What if the inter -
viewer simply misreads them, thinking that his jokes are intended seri -
ously or that her serious comments are jokes? Is it really wise to try to
second-guess the meaning of an individual’s statements?
Even more unsettling is the fact that interview methods are subject
to certain kinds of error that are more serious because they are moresystematic. If a hundred 40-year-old men are asked how they feel, somewill certainly exaggerate how bad things are, some will surely try tocover up their distress; some will be having unusually bad days, someunusually good ones. None of the self-reports may be perfectly trust -
worthy , but on average they are likely to be roughly correct. On theThe Personal Interview 165