---
title: “Soft” measures
description: "| Generally used in contrast to \"hard\" measures and often pejoratively. Mainly applied to self-report and to ratings by lay raters. | | --- | #### Details The perception, not entirely unfairly, is that these measures have limited precision and…"
url: "https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/glossary2/soft-measures/"
updated: "2021-11-02"
category: All OM book glossary entries
---

# “Soft” measures

| Generally used in contrast to "hard" measures and often pejoratively. Mainly applied to self-report and to ratings by lay raters. |
| --- |

#### Details

The perception, not entirely unfairly, is that these measures have limited precision and are ones where the person completing the measure has huge capability to influence the result. Certainly self-ratings and ratings by untrained raters raise questions about generalisability, inter-rater (un)reliability) and possible systematic effects (bias/invalidity). However, as the therapy business is about subjectivity and the pertinence of "hard" measures is often unclear, these are our bread and butter measures.

#### Try also

"Hard" measures
Reliability
Validity
Generalisability

#### Chapters

Pretty much throughout the book!

#### Dates

Created 2/11/21