Initial elevation bias in subjective reports
Open accessAbstract
Significance: People’s reports of their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are essential assessment tools in biomedical and social science. When subjective states have been studied over time, however, researchers have often observed an unpredicted and puzzling decrease with repeated assessments. Our results across multiple outcomes in four field experiments suggest that this pattern is due to an initial elevation bias. This effect is larger for reports of internal states than for behaviors and for negative mental states and physical symptoms than for positive states. This initial elevation bias needs to be considered in all types of research using subjective reports.
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Duplicate baseline assessments mitigate the influence of regression to the mean and elevation bias that may confound clinical trials.
“Duplicate baseline assessments will be performed to mitigate the influence of certain non-specific effects (i.e. regression to the mean [179] and elevation bias [180]) that may confound clinical trials.”
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“regression to the mean [179] and elevation bias [180]) that may confound clinical trials.”
Background
- Authors
- Shrout, P. E., Stadler, G., Lane, S. P., McClure, M. J., Jackson, G. L., Clavél, F. D., Iida, M., Gleason, M. E. J., Xu, J. H., & Bolger, N.
- Affiliations
- New York University (US)
- University of Aberdeen (GB)
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- Adelphi University (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Iowa State University (US)
- Arizona State University (US)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Columbia University (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-12-18
- Volume
- 115
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- E15-E23
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5776801
- OpenAlex
- W2777798779
- Semantic Scholar
- 577ce996ba208661438540e5b3792792585a9a6b
- Cited by
- 190
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 13
- FWCI
- 17.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Aberdeen University Research Archive (Aberdeen University) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- HHS | NIH | National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH060366)
- HHS | NIH | National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01 AA017672)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Mental Health Research Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- subjective reports, within-person change, repeated assessment, internal state, negative mental states, somatic symptoms, self-assessment bias
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Self-Assessment, Self Report
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