VALIDITY OF SELF-ASSESSMENTS AS AN AUDIT TOOL: A COGNITIVE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
VALIDITY OF SELF-ASSESSMENTS AS AN AUDIT TOOL: A COGNITIVE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the validity of self-assessments as audit tools in data protection and information security contexts from cognitive and psychological perspectives. By conducting a comprehensive literature analysis, this research synthesizes findings from several academic fields to investigate how cognitive and psychological biases influence the validity of self-assessments. Thus, this paper separates the self-assessment process into four subtasks: comprehension, retrieval, judgment, and response, each of which is vulnerable to specific biases. Key findings show various factors that threaten the validity of self- assessments: problems in comprehension due to the complexity of the languages used, memory biases in information retrieval, and judgment errors such as satisficing and acquiescence, among response order effects. The study finds that these biases could give incorrect results even when respondents mean to answer honestly. By implication, this research contributes to the scientific basis for reformation and improvements in the design of self-assessment tools because the psychological factors discussed form strong bases that should be brought into consideration to enhance validity of self-assessments.

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