| Self-assessment, the judgment of one's own abilities or traits, is being used to make decisions on future learning, curriculum, and program evaluation. In order to make well-informed decisions, self-assessment should be accurate. Previous evidence of self assessment accuracy has been inconsistent. This dissertation sought to improve accuracy by drawing upon the heuristics and biases perspective. Two experiments were performed to investigate the effect of question format on the use of the availability heuristic and the anchoring and adjustment heuristic in self-assessment.; Improving self-assessment accuracy was investigated by asking people to assess their driving skills using a web-based survey. A total of 221 people participated: 93 in Experiment 1 and 128 in Experiment 2. Both experiments were 2 X 2 factorial designs with heuristic elicitation and heuristic suppression as factors.; In Experiment 1, concerning the availability heuristic, heuristic elicitation involved asking participants to imagine a situation and provide reasons for an event occurring; in order to reduce the heuristic's effect, heuristic suppression asked participants to provide reasons the event would not occur. The evidence indicates the availability heuristic may be used in self-assessment but does not affect self-assessment ratings or accuracy in comparison to a control group.; In Experiment 2, concerning the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, heuristic elicitation was the presence of an anchor; heuristic suppression included a scoring guide in order to reduce the heuristic's effect. The evidence indicates a high anchor may not affect self-assessment ratings or accuracy when self-assessing, but accuracy may improve when using a scoring guide.; The results point to variables that need further investigation to clarify the role of heuristics and biases in self-assessment and their impact on accuracy. These variables are discussed, as well as limitations and delimitations of Experiments 1 and 2. |
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