Survey Mode, Social Desirability Effects, and Antisemitic Attitudes: A Survey Experiment

Are attitudes about morally controversial (and often prohibited) market transactions affected by information about their costs and benefits? We address this question for the case of payments for human organs. We find in a survey experiment with US residents (N=3,417) that providing information on the potential efficiency benefits of a regulated price mechanism for organs significantly increased support for payments from a baseline of 52 percent to 71 percent. The survey was devised to minimize social desirability biases in responses, and additional analyses validate the interpretation that subjects were reflecting on the case-specific details provided, rather than just reacting to any information.

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The Distributional Survey Experiment

10.31219/osf.io/d9uy4 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sandra Gilgen

Keyword(s):

Distributive Justice ◽

Social Desirability ◽

Situational Factors ◽

Social Desirability Bias ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Multidimensional Approach ◽

Natural Manner ◽

Justice Research ◽

Scarce Resources ◽

Trade Offs

What is a just allocation of goods for whom, when and why? Given that the answer to these questions involve need, merit and equality considerations and call for a multidimensional approach that takes individual, contextual and situational factors into account, we are in need of efficient methods designed to help tackle the complexity. The main aim of this contribution is to introduce the distributional survey experiment (DSE), which was developed precisely for that purpose and captures the nature of the problem of distributional justice by accounting for the trade-offs that individuals are forced to make when allocating scarce resources. The DSE is a new survey experiment that measures people’s justice attitudes in as direct and natural manner as possible, while minimising problems of social desirability bias. This paper focuses on showing and comparing three possible methods for analysing the data from the DSE and discussing its potential for distributive justice research.

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Vote Overreporting and a Survey Experiment: The Case of the Taiwan National Elections

Issues & Studies ◽

10.1142/s1013251116500016 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 52 (01) ◽

pp. 1650001 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

CHUNG-LI WU ◽

XIAOCHEN SU

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Social Desirability ◽

Voter Turnout ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

National Elections ◽

Western Countries ◽

Theoretical Examination ◽

Control Question ◽

The World ◽

Memory Failure

The misreporting of voter turnout, prevalent in survey data across the world, has received comparatively little attention anywhere apart from in some western countries. This study evaluates the use of questions specifically designed to mitigate the level of vote overreporting for the 2012 national elections in Taiwan. After a theoretical examination of social desirability and memory failure, the two primary causes of misreporting, we present the results of a split-question experiment featuring two questions designed to mitigate overreporting. While the findings reveal that the experiment with changes to the questionnaire context was far from successful because of a low reported turnout for the control question, it is the case that, as hypothesized, reported voter turnout differs vastly among the different questions, with the question mitigating for social desirability resulting in higher figures than that for memory failure.

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Social Desirability Bias in Attitudinal Measures. An Experimental Study Looking at Survey Modes, Respondent Traits and the Desirability of Survey Topics and Individual Questions

10.31235/osf.io/z397w ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Henrik Kenneth Andersen

Keyword(s):

Social Desirability ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Social Desirability Bias ◽

Personal Interview ◽

Negative Attitudes ◽

Survey Mode ◽

Mode Effects ◽

Response Behaviour ◽

Sensitive Topics ◽

Confirmatory Factor

This study looks at negative attitudes towards various out-groups and examines in an experimental design the influence of anonymous interview settings on estimates of attitudes towards supposedly sensitive topics. Respondents were presented with instruments meant to measure various forms of prejudice towards out-groups while the interview was conducted at random either as a computer assisted personal interview (CAPI) or computer assisted self interview (CASI). The scales used in this study can be shown to be both reliable as well as valid, furthermore, in accordance with various research by Bierly (1985), Zick et al. (2008) and Heitmeyer (2005) the results of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) show various forms of prejudice form a type of generalized attitude. In the more recent articles from Zick et al. (2008), Heitmeyer (2005), Wagner et al. (2008), this is referred to as the ‘Syndrome Group-Focused Enmity’ (GFE). So while both an overarching ‘syndrome’ of prejudice as well as valid and reliable measures of individual forms of prejudice can be empirically confirmed, the results of the analyses show that prejudice towards a specific out-group, let alone a generalized attitude of prejudice, cannot be seen as uniformly desirable. Specific items elicit varying response behaviour. Item- and topic-trait desirabilities were established to help explain the extent to which the survey mode affected estimates. Other respondent- and item-related characteristics also influence SD bias. Survey mode effects are often only seen in conjunction with other factors.

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Social Desirability in Personality Inventories

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000138 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 35 (3) ◽

pp. 144-157 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Martin Bäckström ◽

Fredrik Björklund

Keyword(s):

Social Desirability ◽

Big Five ◽

Work Performance ◽

Factor Model ◽

Five Factor Model ◽

Peer Ratings ◽

Personality Inventories ◽

Model Study ◽

The Difference ◽

New Variables

The difference between evaluatively loaded and evaluatively neutralized five-factor inventory items was used to create new variables, one for each factor in the five-factor model. Study 1 showed that these variables can be represented in terms of a general evaluative factor which is related to social desirability measures and indicated that the factor may equally well be represented as separate from the Big Five as superordinate to them. Study 2 revealed an evaluative factor in self-ratings and peer ratings of the Big Five, but the evaluative factor in self-reports did not correlate with such a factor in ratings by peers. In Study 3 the evaluative factor contributed above the Big Five in predicting work performance, indicating a substance component. The results are discussed in relation to measurement issues and self-serving biases.

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Psychometric Properties of the Spontaneous and Deliberate Mind Wandering Scales

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027/1015-5759/a000470 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (6) ◽

pp. 878-890 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

David Marcusson-Clavertz ◽

Oscar N. E. Kjell

Keyword(s):

Anxiety Disorder ◽

Psychometric Properties ◽

Generalized Anxiety Disorder ◽

Social Desirability ◽

Cognitive Task ◽

Experience Sampling ◽

Well Being ◽

Mind Wandering ◽

Generalized Anxiety ◽

Psychological Variables

Abstract. Thinking about task-unrelated matters (mind wandering) is related to cognition and well-being. However, the relations between mind wandering and other psychological variables may depend on whether the former commence spontaneously or deliberately. The current two studies investigated the psychometric properties of the Spontaneous and Deliberate Mind Wandering Scales (SDMWS; Carriere, Seli, & Smilek, 2013 ). Study 1 evaluated the stability of the scales over 2 weeks ( N = 284 at Time 1), whereas Study 2 ( N = 323) evaluated their relations to Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms, Openness, Social desirability, and experience-sampling reports of intentional and unintentional mind wandering during an online cognitive task. The results indicated that the SDMWS were better fitted with a two-factor than a one-factor solution, although the fit was improved with the exclusion of one item. The scales exhibited strong measurement invariance across gender and time, and moderately high test-retest reliability. Spontaneous mind wandering predicted Generalized anxiety disorder and experience-sampling reports of unintentional mind wandering, whereas Deliberate mind wandering predicted Openness and experience-sampling reports of intentional mind wandering. Furthermore, Spontaneous mind wandering showed a negative association with social desirability of weak-to-medium strength. In sum, the scales generally showed favorable psychometric properties.

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Confound It!

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027/1015-5759/a000459 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (6) ◽

pp. 855-867 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

John T. Kulas ◽

Rachael Klahr ◽

Lindsey Knights

Keyword(s):

Social Desirability ◽

Response Pattern ◽

Experimental Manipulation ◽

Scoring Method ◽

Method Effect ◽

Coding Method ◽

The Social ◽

Current Article ◽

Method Factors ◽

Psychological Inventory

Abstract. Many investigators have noted “reverse-coding” method factors when exploring response pattern structure with psychological inventory data. The current article probes for the existence of a confound in these investigations, whereby an item’s level of saturation with socially desirable content tends to covary with the item’s substantive scale keying. We first investigate its existence, demonstrating that 15 of 16 measures that have been previously implicated as exhibiting a reverse-scoring method effect can also be reasonably characterized as exhibiting a scoring key/social desirability confound. A second set of analyses targets the extent to which the confounding variable may confuse interpretation of factor analytic results and documents strong social desirability associations. The results suggest that assessment developers perhaps consider the social desirability scale value of indicators when constructing scale aggregates (and possibly scales when investigating inter-construct associations). Future investigations would ideally disentangle the confound via experimental manipulation.

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