Psychological research relies heavily on self-report and behavioral measures collected by an experimenter, but first-person methods that capture subtle facets of subjective experience are less common. Without these measures, fundamental aspects of psychological phenomena remain inaccessible to theory. This article reviews established first-person methods, compares them on relevant dimensions, and helps researchers select suitable methods for studying subjective experience. Integrating first-person perspectives can complement and enrich third-person research.
Micro-phenomenology is a technique for improving first-person reports of experience, typically conducted with a second-person interviewer. A self-inquiry format, using a guiding document without an interviewer, offers time and cost advantages but its reliability for untrained subjects was unknown. This study attempted to replicate a previous experiment that tested whether micro-phenomenology increases report reliability. The replication failed. Possible explanations include a methodological weakness in the original study, ineffectiveness of the self-inquiry format used here, or that micro-phenomenological self-inquiry requires training. The authors conclude that the self-inquiry format is insufficient for conducting micro-phenomenological studies and that training is necessary.