Do Social Desirability Scales Measure Dishonesty?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Djurre Holtrop ◽  
Angus W. Hughes ◽  
Patrick D. Dunlop ◽  
Joan Chan ◽  
Grace Steedman
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Effect Size ◽  
Personnel Selection ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Response Format ◽  
Socially Desirable Responding ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
False Response ◽  
Sum Scores

Abstract. Social Desirability (SD) scales are sometimes treated, by researchers, as measures of dishonesty and, by practitioners, as indicators of faking on self-report assessments in high-stakes settings, such as personnel selection. Applying SD scales to measure dishonesty or faking, however, remains a point of contention among the scientific community. This two-part study investigated if SD scales, with a True/ False response format, are valid for these purposes. Initially, 46 participants completed an SD scale and 12 personality items while under instruction to “think aloud”, that is, to verbalize all the thoughts they had. These spoken thoughts were recorded and transcribed. Next, 175 judges rated the participants’ honesty in relation to each SD item, based on the participants’ transcribed spoken thoughts and their selected response to the item. The results showed that responses keyed as “socially desirable responding” were judged as significantly less honest than those not keyed as such. However, the effect size was very small, and the socially desirable responses were still being judged as somewhat honest overall. Further, participants’ SD scale sum scores were not related to the judges’ ratings of participant honesty on the personality items. Thus, overall, SD scales appear to be a poor measure of dishonesty.

The role of social desirability in the assessment of mnestic and metacognitive efficiencies in adulthood: a preliminary study

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1175-1175 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.C. Fastame ◽  
M.P. Penna ◽  
B. Leone ◽  
C. Puddu
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Socially Desirable Responding ◽  
Cognitive Failures ◽  
High Prevalence ◽  
Preliminary Study

Ageing is part of a continuum which is characterized by developmental and emotional changes as well as cognitive losses and gains. There is evidence that the perception of life quality in the elders is influenced by the level of efficiency of cognitive functions and personal beliefs on the senescence (e.g., De Beni, 2009). Indeed, when the early cognitive decline is negatively perceived, the late adults tend to show low self-esteem, social retirement, depression, low general life satisfaction. Overall, in geriatric studies scales designed to detect subjective psychological well-being are usually administrated ignoring the disturbing effect of several factors, such as the socially desirable responding, a construct referring to the attitude to project favorable images of themselves on questionnaires or during social interaction (e.g., Knauper et al., 2004). The present study was aimed to investigate whether social desirability is related to several measures of memory and metacognitive efficiencies. Forty-eight young (i.e., 20–30 years old) and old (i.e., 65–74 years aged) participants recruited in Ogliastra (e.g., an area in Sardinia known for the high prevalence of centenarians) were individually administrated a battery of tests including the Italian version of the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (Saggino and Perfetti, 2003) together with a measure of subjective mnestic efficiency for daily life facts (Questionnaire on Cognitive Failures, De Beni et al., 2008) and a self-report memory beliefs questionnaire (Cornoldi and De Beni, 2003). The results show that the measurement of the perceived mnestic and metacognitive efficiencies are susceptible to socially desirable responding.

Relation of Agoraphobics' Health Locus of Control Orientation to Severity of Agoraphobia

1985 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 619-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Adler ◽  
James H. Price
Keyword(s):  
Locus Of Control ◽  
Health Locus Of Control ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Response Format ◽  
Control Scale ◽  
False Response ◽  
Control Orientation ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
Multidimensional Health ◽  
True False

77 agoraphobics and 77 nonagoraphobics completed the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control scale in a true-false response format. The agoraphobics scored high on subscales of both internal and chance health locus of control. The agoraphobics were classified into four levels (severe, moderate, mild, and cured) assessed by self-report, which indicated severe agoraphobics were more oriented toward a chance health locus of control than were those at other levels.

Multicultural Competency: Social Desirability and Self-Report Measures

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin K. Shepler ◽  
Derek M. Zuhlke ◽  
Simone D. Foster ◽  
Sheena Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Multicultural Competency ◽  
Self Report

Faking Detection Improved: Adopting a Likert Item Response Process Tree Model

2021 ◽  
pp. 109442812110029
Author(s):  
Tianjun Sun ◽  
Bo Zhang ◽  
Mengyang Cao ◽  
Fritz Drasgow
Keyword(s):  
Item Response ◽  
Personality Assessment ◽  
Personnel Selection ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Tree Model ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Job Applicant ◽  
Favorable Impression ◽  
Tree Modeling

With the increasing popularity of noncognitive inventories in personnel selection, organizations typically wish to be able to tell when a job applicant purposefully manufactures a favorable impression. Past faking research has primarily focused on how to reduce faking via instrument design, warnings, and statistical corrections for faking. This article took a new approach by examining the effects of faking (experimentally manipulated and contextually driven) on response processes. We modified a recently introduced item response theory tree modeling procedure, the three-process model, to identify faking in two studies. Study 1 examined self-reported vocational interest assessment responses using an induced faking experimental design. Study 2 examined self-reported personality assessment responses when some people were in a high-stakes situation (i.e., selection). Across the two studies, individuals instructed or expected to fake were found to engage in more extreme responding. By identifying the underlying differences between fakers and honest respondents, the new approach improves our understanding of faking. Percentage cutoffs based on extreme responding produced a faker classification precision of 85% on average.

Significance tests: Necessary but not sufficient

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-222
Author(s):  
Louis G. Tassinary
Keyword(s):  
Effect Size ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Significance Tests ◽  
Experimental Control

Chow (1996) offers a reconceptualization of statistical significance that is reasoned and comprehensive. Despite a somewhat rough presentation, his arguments are compelling and deserve to be taken seriously by the scientific community. It is argued that his characterization of literal replication, types of research, effect size, and experimental control are in need of revision.

Coping, Defense and Socially Desirable Responses

1968 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 985-988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Alker
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Socially Desirable Responding ◽  
Social Desirability Scale ◽  
Strategic Capacity ◽  
Defensive Behaviors ◽  
The Social

Coping and defensive behaviors, assessed by intensive interviews, covary, respectively, with the presence of socially desirable and socially undesirable inventory responses. Minimizing the influence of the social desirability variable consequently interferes with the strategic capacity of inventory items to index coping and defense. Furthermore, using low social-desirability scale value items most effectively discriminates between genuine and defensively distorted inventory responses. Neutral items are less efficient in this connection even though they minimize socially desirable responding.

Measurement Invariant but Non-Normal Treatment Responses in Guided Internet Psychotherapies for Depressive and Generalized Anxiety Disorders

Assessment ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 107319112110625
Author(s):  
Tom H. Rosenström ◽  
Ville Ritola ◽  
Suoma Saarni ◽  
Grigori Joffe ◽  
Jan-Henry Stenberg
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Treatment Response ◽  
Generalized Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Health Assessment ◽  
Psychotherapy Research ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Generalized Anxiety ◽  
Equivalence Testing ◽  
Sum Scores ◽  
Normally Distributed

Assessment of treatment response in psychotherapies can be undermined by lack of longitudinal measurement invariance (LMI) in symptom self-report inventories, by measurement error, and/or by wrong model assumptions. To understand and compare these threats to validity of outcome assessment in psychotherapy research, we studied LMI, sum scores, and Davidian Curve Item Response Theory models in a naturalistic guided internet psychotherapy treatment register of 2,218 generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients and 3,922 depressive disorder (DD) patients (aged ≥16 years). Symptoms were repeatedly assessed by Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment-7 (GAD-7) or Beck Depression Inventory. The symptom self-reports adhered to LMI under equivalence testing, suggesting sum scores are reasonable proxies for disorder status. However, the standard LMI assumption of normally distributed latent factors did not hold and inflated treatment response estimates by 0.2 to 0.3 standard deviation units compared with sum scores. Further methodological research on non-normally distributed latent constructs holds promise in advancing LMI and mental health assessment.

Exploring the empirical evidence of social desirability bias (SDB) in sport consumer research

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngho Park ◽  
Dae Hee Kwak
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Sport Management ◽  
Marketing Research ◽  
Sport Marketing ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Social Desirability Bias ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Report Data ◽  
Self Report Data ◽  
And Control

PurposeThe current study aims to provide a systematic approach to detecting and identifying social desirability bias (SDB) in survey data using controversial sponsorship as a research context.Design/methodology/approachWe used an experimental approach to manipulate sponsorship situations (e.g. Beer sponsor vs Sports drink sponsor) that could potentially motivate respondents to under-report their perceptions toward the sponsor. By employing both procedural and statistical approaches, our evidence shows that responses toward the controversial sponsor were in fact contaminated by SDB.FindingsThe findings of the study provide methodological and practical implications for how sport marketing scholars and practitioners can identify, detect and control SDB in self-report data.Originality/valueWe argue that some survey research in sport marketing may be prone to SDB, but SDB has not received sufficient attention in sport marketing research. We emphasize the importance of detecting (and avoiding/controlling) SDB in sport management research.

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