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On establishing the validity of ‘objective’ data: can we rely on cross-interview agreement?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Stephen Platt
Stephen Platt*
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Unit for Epidemiological Studies in Psychiatry, Edinburgh
*
2Address for correspondence: Mr S. D. Platt, Medical Research Council Unit for Epidemiological Studies in Psychiatry, University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, Edinburgh EHIO SHF.
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Synopsis

It has been proposed that a high level of agreement between informants‘ reports about events and happenings (‘objective’ data) is a sound basis for establishing (a) the validity of the measure which is based on the reports, and (b) the nature of objective reality. In this paper it is argued that such agreement may not be an adequate basis for validation since the accounts may not be independent. Likewise, low across-interview agreement may not signify the inaccuracy of either report because of the phenomenon of ‘object-variation’. It is concluded that, although this method of validation can be significantly improved, it should be supplemented, wherever possible, by other approaches.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , August 1980 , pp. 573 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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Footnotes

1

This is a substantially revised version of a paper presented at the Medical Sociology Group Annual Conference, 16–18 September 1977

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