BACKGROUND These studies sought to investigate the relation between social desirability and self-reported health risk behaviors (e.g., alcohol use, drug use, smoking) in web-based research. METHODS Three longitudinal studies (Study 1: N = 5612, 51% women; Study 2: N = 619, 60%; Study 3: N = 846, 59%) among randomly selected members of two online panels (Dutch; German) using several social des...

The purpose of this study was to detect social desirable response bias on Chinese nurses’ attitudes and beliefs toward sexuality care of cancer patients. A cross-sectional self-reported questionnaire based survey was used. Measures included a 12-item Inventory of Sexuality Attitude and Belief Survey (SABS) and a 10-item Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Total social desirability scores ...

This paper explores whether social desirability affects the illusion of explanatory depth (IEOD) by comparing the magnitude of this illusion in topics with different levels of social desirability within several domains. This question was chosen because prior literature shows that social expectations about how much a person should know about a certain topic affect the magnitude of the IOED. Prev...

Research on achievement goals has demonstrated that mastery goals positively impact achievement-related outcomes, but paradoxically hold an inconsistent relation with academic achievement. We hypothesized that this relationship depends on the reason why students endorse mastery goals--namely, to garner teachers' appreciation (social desirability) or to succeed at university (social utility). Fi...

A Children's Social Desirability (CSD) questionnaire was constructed and administered to 956 Ss in Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12. A direct question ("yes-no") form of the scale was presented to children in the 3rd, 4th, and Sth grades in individual testing sessions, and a true-false form was given older Ss in group sessions. For both forms of the questionnaire, split-half reliabilities and t...

BACKGROUND This study investigated the relation between social desirability and self-reported physical activity in web-based research. FINDINGS A longitudinal study (N = 5,495, 54% women) was conducted on a representative sample of the Dutch population using the Marlowe-Crowne Scale as social desirability measure and the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. Social ...

BACKGROUND Bias due to social desirability has long been of concern to evaluators relying on self-report data. It is conceivable that health program evaluation is particularly susceptible to social desirability bias as individuals may be inclined to present themselves or certain health behaviors in a more positive light and/or appease the course leader. Thus, the influence of social desirabilit...