Some Effects of "Social Desirability" in Survey Studies

Phillips, Derek L.; Clancy, Kevin J.

doi:10.1086/225231

Cited by 407 publications

(258 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Yet, several studies found evidence for SD-bias in reports about negative attitudes toward other groups, as for instance African Americans or foreigners. Here, subjects reported less prejudice in interviewer-rather than self-administered interviews (Krysan, 1998) and when subjects believed racial prejudice to be increasingly more socially undesirable (Phillips & Clancy, 1972). In particular, it has been found that the SDbeliefs about positive and negative racial attitudes varied considerably between groups of respondents, established incentives for SD-bias in the direction of both kinds of attitude answers and the respondents' answers followed these incentives (Stocké, 2004).…”

Section: Previous Research About Sd-bias In the Analyzed Topicsmentioning

confidence: 94%

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Measures of Desirability Beliefs and Their Validity as Indicators for Socially Desirable Responding

Stocké

Hunkler

2007

Field Methods

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Social desirability (SD)-bias is a serious threat for survey-data quality, and the respondents' desirability beliefs have proven in many studies to predict the incentives for the strength as well as for the direction of this bias. However, the issue of the relative validity of different ways to measure these incentives has hardly received any attention. We introduced three such measures and discussed the respective tradeoffs between their parsimony on the one hand and the implied assumptions which have to be fulfilled on the other. In the empirical part of our paper, we tested with four questionnaire topics whether and how strong these assumptions are violated and thus how much measurement effort is necessary to obtain a sufficiently good indicator for the perceived incentives for SD-bias. These topics were: (a) having prejudice against the elderly, (b) making charitable donations, (c) participating in political elections and (d) being environmentally conscious. We found the most parsimonious one-point measure to be strongly affected by measurement error in the case of all questionnaire topics. Depending on how strong the assumption of monotony was violated, for some topics the medium elaborated simple difference scores were sufficiently valid, but partly only the most elaborated domain-specific difference scores were a valid predictor for the potential strength and direction of incentives for SD-bias.

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Section: Previous Research About Sd-bias In the Analyzed Topicsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The standard method -the one-point measure (OPM) -was introduced by Edwards (1957) and is the most parsimonious way to measure incentives for SDbias (e.g. Phillips & Clancy, 1972). Respondents are asked to rate the social desirability of a particular trait (e.g.…”

Section: Measures Of Desirability Beliefs and Their Underlying Assumpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measures of Desirability Beliefs and Their Validity as Indicators for Socially Desirable Responding

Stocké

Hunkler

2007

Field Methods

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“…The view that socially desirable responding is, at least in part, a personality trait underlies psychologists' early attempts to develop various social desirability scales. Though some of these efforts (e.g., Edwards, 1957;Philips & Clancy, 1970, 1972 recognize the possibility that social desirability is a property of the items rather than (or as well as) of the respondents, many of them treat socially desirable responding as a stable personality characteristic (e.g., Crowne & Marlowe, 1964;Schuessler, Hittle, & Cardascia, 1978). By contrast, survey researchers have tended to view socially desirable responding as a response strategy reflecting the sensitivity of specific items for specific individuals; thus, Sudman and Bradburn (1974) had interviewers rate the social 1 In addition, the relevant norms may vary across social classes or subcultures within a society.…”

Section: Sensitivity and Social Desirabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitive questions in surveys.

Tourangeau¹,

Yan²

2007

Psychological Bulletin

2,104

1,554

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Psychologists have worried about the distortions introduced into standardized personality measures by social desirability bias. Survey researchers have had similar concerns about the accuracy of survey reports about such topics as illicit drug use, abortion, and sexual behavior. The article reviews the research done by survey methodologists on reporting errors in surveys on sensitive topics, noting parallels and differences from the psychological literature on social desirability. The findings from the survey studies suggest that misreporting about sensitive topics is quite common and that it is largely situational. The extent of misreporting depends on whether the respondent has anything embarrassing to report and on design features of the survey. The survey evidence also indicates that misreporting on sensitive topics is a more or less motivated process in which respondents edit the information they report to avoid embarrassing themselves in the presence of an interviewer or to avoid repercussions from third parties.

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“…Third, the respondents specifically were asked to complete the questionnaire honestly. The more honesty seems assured, the less social desirability bias is detected (Phillips and Clancy 1972). Hence, social desirability bias may not be an issue in this study.…”

Section: Samplementioning

confidence: 63%

Assessing the impact of budgetary participation on budgetary outcomes: the role of information technology for enhanced communication and activity-based costing

2014

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This paper addresses the long-standing question of how budgetary participation (BP) affects budgetary outcomes. Information technology for enhanced communication (ITEC) and activity-based costing (ABC) are taken into consideration as moderators that might affect the relationship between BP and budgetary outcomes in manufacturing firms. Based on moderated and polynomial regression analyses, the study's findings indicate that the main effects of BP, ITEC and ABC on budgetary outcomes are not significant, and that while ABC significantly moderates the relationship between budgetary participation and budgetary slack, ITEC does not moderate this relationship. Results also indicate that both ITEC and ABC significantly moderate the relationship between budgetary participation and managerial performance. These findings suggest that the effect of budgetary participation on budgetary outcomes can be contingent on ITEC and ABC although their impact varies with the nature of budgetary outcomes.

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Some Effects of "Social Desirability" in Survey Studies

Cited by 407 publications

References 30 publications

Measures of Desirability Beliefs and Their Validity as Indicators for Socially Desirable Responding

Measures of Desirability Beliefs and Their Validity as Indicators for Socially Desirable Responding

Sensitive questions in surveys.

Assessing the impact of budgetary participation on budgetary outcomes: the role of information technology for enhanced communication and activity-based costing

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