Abstract Mkid 118

Content analysis is one of the basic methods used in psychological dream research. Whereas reliability issues have been addressed in the literature quite often, the validity of dream content analysis has rarely been studied in a systematic way. The present study investigated the validity of a bizarreness scale by asking whether an external judge estimates the number of bizarre elements per dream in the same way as the dreamer herself or himself. As reported previously for dream emotions, a marked underestimation of bizarreness by the external judges was found. The findings indicate, therefore, that written dream reports do not yield not a complete picture of the original dream experience and hence the validity of dream content analysis which is based on written dream reports is limited at least in several areas. How severely the validity problem affects the results of content analytic studies and which dream characteristics are most susceptible to this kind of error should be investigated in future studies using a methodology similar to that employed in the present study.