Imagine the scene: you’re in a high-stakes meeting where the timelines are tight and the pressure is on. A Chief Medical Officer is on hand to measure the fight-or-flight responses of all the employees in the room. The metrics all tell the same story: increased heartrate, elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline.

According to the biology, the employees are all experiencing a stress response.

But how do you know who’s thriving under the pressure (experiencing eustress) and who is buckling under the weight of expectation? (experiencing distress)

You don’t.

For that, you would need to ask the employees themselves. You would need to trust in the power of self-reported data – the ‘I’ in the science – says Dr David Batman, member of the Science Advisory Board at Virgin Pulse Institute.

Dr Batman has been a medical practitioner for over 40 years and is a registered Consultant Specialist in Occupational Health with specialist knowledge of psychological health at work. He confirms that an individual’s senses and perception are important prerequisites for improving their health and performance, regardless of the underlying issue.

“Self-reported data is a critical component of all social science studies,” he says. “Businesses that understand its power have a clear window into their employees’ needs.

“Our clients rely on our reporting to better understand both their people and their business needs, as they relate to health. They are looking for reliable and valid data that they can base decisions on and it all starts with the employee. Why? Because no one is better positioned to report on the state of their physical and psychological health than the person at the controls.”

Here’s how to get more accurate and valuable results from self-reported data:

–Self-reported data is only useful if it’s framed correctly. Use externally validated questionnaires, for example from the World Health Organization, to provide structure and scientific validity for your question sets.

– Remember the cognitive issues at play. Ask yourself, will my people have the knowledge or memory to answer this question correctly? Dr Batman cites one example where researchers got inaccurate responses when they asked how many times respondents had drunk alcohol in the past year. The same question, posed during a 30-day time frame, provided much more accurate answers.

– The same applies to situational pressures. ‘Fear of reprisal’ may affect outcomes, so seriously consider the positioning of your health strategy and, in particular, the positioning of data collection and health risk assessments in your organisation. If employees fear reprisal, then they’re less likely to answer openly and honestly. A guarantee of anonymity can help overcome these fears. Having the data handled by a third party also creates trust.

– Make sure your compliance and data security is airtight. The more personal the nature of the data, the more important this becomes. Ultimately, these numbers are human narratives, insights into human behaviour. Our reporting is able to tell hundreds of thousands of stories because clients trust us to protect sensitive data with the most stringent security measures. You need to inspire the same confidence.