High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Self-selection is a term used to indicate any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling. It is commonly used to describe situations where the characteristics of the people which cause them to select themselves in the group create abnormal or undesirable conditions in the group.Self-selection is a major problem in research in sociology, psychology, economics and many other social sciences.The term is also used in criminology to describe the process by which specific predispositions may lead an offender to choose a criminal career and lifestyle.