Choosing a measurement approach

Although the empirical literature on humility is dominated by verbal descriptions of stable levels of general humility captured by self-report, we have described multiple alternative measurement approaches that could be used and would be more appropriate for some research questions and designs.

We first note the interdependence between how humility is measured and how it is studied. If the only approach to measurement is self-report questionnaires, then the primary approach to studying humility will be large-sample surveys and correlation-based analytic methods.Thus, one benefit to an investment in alternative approaches to measuring humility is that doing so will lead to the use of a wider array of research strategies and data-analytic methods. More gen­erally, extending measurement of humility to other approaches will facilitate broader exploration of the antecedents and consequences of humility as well as the processes by which it influences behavior and well-being and, potentially, how it can be changed through intervention.

When designing new studies of humility, four questions should guide researchers’ choice of measurement approach.

• Is there reason to believe that members of the population of interest are willing and able to provide valid information about their own level of humility? Children, and perhaps even adolescents, are not likely able to do so.

• Is the form of humility that is to be studied amenable to verbal expression? Put differently, can research participants or informants judge humility by providing ratings of state­ments in which it is described? If not, then capturing alternative expressions of humility, such as behavior or reactions to relevant stimuli, will be required. Despite the appeal of these alter­native expressions, relatively little work has examined them with reference to humility. The empirical literature on humility would benefit from a better of understanding of how humility is evidenced in behavior and reactions to people and situations for which humility is relevant.

• Is the interest general humility, particular features of general humility, or humil­ity as evidenced in specific domains? When humility is included in a larger set of correlates or predictors, then a single score representing general humility may be suffi­cient to evaluate the position of humility in a network of variables or set of predictors. However, the specificity-matching principle highlights the fact that such measures are likely to underestimate associations involving humility unless correlates or outcomes are similarly general (e.g., subjective well-being). If the correlates or outcomes are specific then, to the extent possible, the measure of humility should be specific to the domain of variables with which its association will be estimated. When the motivating research questions concern the nature of humility, information on particular features of humility may be important, necessitating a measure that produces subscale scores reflecting the features of interest.

• Does the question of interest concern the degree of humility research partici­pants evidence most of the time in most situations, or does it concern humility as evident at specific times and places? Basic questions about trait-level humility are important for positioning the concept among the range of traits that characterize people's self-construal, motives, and behavior.

Although each of these questions points to a class of measures, it is the intersection of responses to the questions that points to a specific measurement approach for a specific study. For example, determining that state-level measure is required to address the research question of interest does not address questions about specificity, expression, or source. Each new study of humility would benefit from answering each of these questions in search of the optimal measurement approach. Also, ongoing efforts to improve measurement of humility would do well to focus on particular combinations for which measures are lacking.

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