The Reliability and Validity of Concurrent, Retrospective, and Interpretive Verbal Reports: An Experimental Study

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine empirically the reliability and validity of three kinds of verbal reports: concurrent, retrospective, and interpretive verbalizations. An analysis of verbal reports obtained for 13 subjects gave the following results: (1) Concurrent verbalization does not seem to affect the reliability of decision outcomes. (2) Concurrent verbal reports appear to be more reliable than retrospective reports. (3) The correlations between different operationalizations of attribute salience are all positive and significantly different from zero.