Estimating a Socially Undesirable Behaviour

This article reports the findings of an experiment designed to evaluate the effect of four questionnaire formats on the willingness of drivers convicted of drunken driving to admit to this socially undesirable behaviour. Four samples of convicted drunk drivers each received a different version of a mail questionnaire about driving behaviour and attitudes. Two versions of the questionnaire included a battery of attitude statements before the 'key' question on drunken driving convictions. One set of attitude statements downplayed the perceived social undesirability of drunken driving, while the other set emphasised it. The other two versions of the questionnaire contained no attitude statements. One simply asked the 'key' question directly, while in the other version drunken driving was embedded in a list of eight traffic offences. The highest admission rate was achieved for the questionnaire which used attitude statements to reduce the social undesirability of drunken driving before asking the behavioural question. However, the inclusion of negatively-framed preceding attitude statements and embedding the behaviour concerned in a list of other related behaviours also yielded a higher admission rate than simply asking a direct question.