Are Inner Speech Self-Report Questionnaires Reliable and Valid?
Open accessAbstract
People often talk to themselves for various reasons, including self-regulation, problem solving, and decision making. We examined the reliability and validity of several self-report measures of inner speech in a sample of 380 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to list as many instances of what they talk to themselves about as they could recall and they also completed several widely-used self-report measures of inner speech, including the Self-Verbalization Questionnaire, the Self- Talk Scale, the Inner Speech Questionnaire, the Self-Talk Inventory, and the Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire. The results showed that self-reports of inner speech are reliable but have only limited validity.
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Although self-report scales often report acceptable psychometric reliability, correlations among scales can be weak, indicating limited validity, or that scales are measuring different aspects of a complex, multifaceted construct.
“Although such scales often report acceptable psychometric reliability, correlations among scales can be weak (Uttl, Morin, & Hamper, 2011), indicating limited validity, or that scales are measuring different aspects of a complex, multifaceted construct.”
From Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology (2015) · cites this paper as Uttl, Morin, & Hamper, 2011
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- Authors
- Uttl, B., Morin, A., & Hamper, B.
- Affiliations
- Mount Royal University (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Uttl, Bob
- Venue
- Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2011
- Volume
- 30
- Pages
- 1719-1723
- ISSN
- 1877-0428 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2055073047
- Cited by
- 44
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 1.37
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Representations and Identity
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
- Keywords
- inner speech, self-talk, self-report measures, reliability statistics, validity, self-regulation, rumination
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