University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Nov 10;12(1):19189. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-23373-9.
There is growing policy interest in identifying contexts that cultivate self-regulation. Doing so often entails comparing groups of individuals (e.g., from different schools). We show that self-report questionnaires-the most prevalent modality for assessing self-regulation-are prone to reference bias, defined as systematic error arising from differences in the implicit standards by which individuals evaluate behavior. In three studies, adolescents (N = 229,685) whose peers performed better academically rated themselves lower in self-regulation and held higher standards for self-regulation. This effect was not observed for task measures of self-regulation and led to paradoxical predictions of college persistence 6 years later. These findings suggest that standards for self-regulation vary by social group, limiting the policy applications of self-report questionnaires.
人们越来越关注识别培养自我调节能力的环境。这样做通常需要比较个体群体（例如，来自不同学校的群体）。我们表明，自我报告问卷（评估自我调节能力最常用的方式）容易受到参照偏差的影响，参照偏差是指由于个体评价行为的隐含标准存在差异而产生的系统性误差。在三项研究中，学术表现更好的同伴的青少年（N=229685 人）自我评估的自我调节能力较低，对自我调节的标准也较高。这种效应在自我调节的任务衡量中没有观察到，这导致了 6 年后对大学坚持率的悖论预测。这些发现表明，自我调节的标准因社会群体而异，这限制了自我报告问卷在政策中的应用。
