Researchers have used children's self-reports to investigate the conditions under which children seek and give help. Little attention has been given to examining the predictive value of such measures, even though investigators in other domains have found discrepancies between self-reports and observed behavior. Two studies were conducted in which observations of 58 7th- and 8th-grade students and 96 9th- and 10th-grade students in Ontario (Canada), respectively, working in cooperative learning groups were compared with self-reported intentions to ask for and give help to peers. Both studies found that self-reports were poor predictors. The low correlations are attributed to student uncertainty about their competence on the task they were working on when observations were made, rather than to inadequacies of the survey instruments. Four tables present study information. (Author/SLD)