Inmate Self-Report Data: A Study of Reliability

The present study examines the reliability of self-report data inadvertently collected from 11 adult inmates in a study of a house arrest program. Data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire that was given twice within a four-month period. Correlations of 92 items, divided into catego...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Criminal justice review (Atlanta, Ga.) Ga.), 1992-09, Vol.17 (2), p.258-267
Main Authors: Mathur, Minu, Dodder, Richard A., Sandhu, Harjit S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Prisoners
Social research
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Summary:The present study examines the reliability of self-report data inadvertently collected from 11 adult inmates in a study of a house arrest program. Data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire that was given twice within a four-month period. Correlations of 92 items, divided into categories of "Information," "Expectations," and "Affections," showed wide variation in reliability. Complete agreement on the two occasions was found for only 24 items, which were primarily in the "Information" category. Correlations across the 92 items were also computed for each subject, and these correlations also showed wide variation in reliability. Although no subject gave exactly the same responses on all 92 items, greater reliability was again found in the "Information" category. In addition, 3 of the subjects gave particularly unreliable responses. These results, together with the lack of existing literature on the topic, suggest a need to conduct more research on reliability of inmates in order to develop more reliable measures as well as to detect unreliable subjects.
ISSN:0734-0168
1556-3839
DOI:10.1177/073401689201700206