Achievement Place: the reliability of self-reporting and peer-reporting and their effects on behavior.

Researchers at Achievement Place tested if boys could reliably report their own and each other's room-cleaning.

They first trained the boys to observe and record. Then they tied accurate reports to points in their token economy.

The team tracked whether the training plus points made the reports match adult observations.

The points worked: boys' reports became much more accurate.

But just asking them to report did nothing to the actual room-cleaning.

In short, you can buy truthful data, but the act of reporting alone will not change behavior.

Macdonald et al. (1973), the next-year follow-up, kept the same token system but let the boys run their own rule trials. Participation rose, yet the authors warned that too many points cheapened the reports.

Lancioni et al. (2000) later flipped the script in another group home. They paid peers for praising good social acts, not for dry accuracy. Social interaction and acceptance jumped, showing that rewarded peer reports can change behavior when the content, not just the honesty, earns points.

Einfeld et al. (1995) and McGee et al. (1983) found big gains when students also rated themselves. Their classroom data look like a contradiction, but the target was different: self-evaluation plus tokens improved social skills and carried over to new rooms, something the 1972 study never tried.

If you need trustworthy data from clients, tie a small reward to correct reports. Just do not expect the report itself to act like an intervention. When you want the report to change behavior, reward the message, not just the accuracy, and pick a target the youth cares about.