Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review

“Thomas and Kilmann (1975) and Nederhof (1985) have noted that, in addition to the fact that social desirability may be viewed as a tendency for respondents to behave in a culturally acceptable and appropriate manner, it may also be viewed as a property of the items in a questionnaire.”

“Finally, efforts should also be made to refine or remove items that contain obvious social desirability (see Nederhof 1985).”

“Similarly, method bias can be developed due to similar scale properties across different items Podsakoff et al. (2003); if the wording of items generate socially desirable responses Perry (1996); Nederhof (1985); or if items are worded only positively or negatively (Podsakoff et al., 2012).”

“This social desirability bias, which is a general concern in survey research, may have been alleviated somewhat by the fact that the survey was self-administered (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Social desirability bias (SDB) which means the tendency of respondents to fill in questionnaires in a manner that is viewed favorably by others would affect the validity of questionnaire survey (Nederhof 1985).”

“The more ano nymity seems assured, the less socially desirability responding is detected (Bradburn et al, 1979; Nederhof, 1985; Paulhus, 1984; Wiseman, 1972).”

“Furthermore, several contributions have argued that method bias can be produced if the item wording elicits socially desirable responses (e.g., Nederhof 1985; Perry 1996), if the scale properties are similar across different items (Podsakoff et al. 2003), or if items are only positively or only…”

“cially desirable way when interviewer and interviewee are similar with respect to social standing (Williams 1969; Nederhof 1985).”

“Therefore, anonymous, self-administered surveys should have less SDB than telephone or face-to-face surveys (Dodou & De Winter, 2014; Heerwegh & Loosveldt, 2007; Kreuter, Presser, & Tourangeau, 2008; Nederhof, 1985; Richman, Kiesler, Weisband, & Drasgow, 1999).”

“…the obvious advantages of self-report techniques, some traffic researchers have expressed their doubts about using self-reports as a measure of driving behaviour, because selfreports are always more open to socially desirable responding than unobtrusive observations (Nederhof, 1985; Paulhus, 1991).”

“The survey used anonymous administration and randomized question order to reduce bias [47].”

“Controlled by two means: Forced choice: survey questions were in the form of agree/disagree statements with survey scales, and questions that seemed to be neutral with regard to social desirability (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Therefore, different methods were followed in the research in order to minimize the SDB (Nederhof, 1985; Phillips & Clancy, 1972; Randall & Fernandes, 1991): (a) the respondents were asked to not to write down”

“…people are Ð even though we know that, in addition to systematic errors like self-deception and selfenhancement, demand characteristics, evaluation apprehension, and impression management factors influence self-reports (e.g., Furnham, 1986; Nederhof, 1985; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Strack, 1994).”

“Hence, while not always eliminating social desirability bias, indications suggest that anonymous self-administration of mail surveys gives rise to less distortion than other methods (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Socially desirable responding (SDR) refers to the behavior of respondents when they fill in the survey favorably, which may impact the validity of the survey (Nederhof, 1985).”

“that help to combat SDR, as recommended by Nederhof (1985). The potential dis-”

“…suggests that it may be best to match interviewers with subjects based on their ethnicity, although the literature indicates that professional task-oriented interviewers achieve the best results in terms of valid information, regardless of the ethnicity of the interviewer (Nederhof 1985).”

“However, in practice, it is impossible to eliminate such biases entirely using survey methods (Nederhof, 1985).”

“…too, note the potential for PSTs’ relationships with researchers to shape self-reports in ways that might bias research findings (e.g., Luft, Bragg, & Peters, 1999), as more general accounts of “impression management” (Goffman, 1959) and “social desirability bias” might suggest (Nederhof, 1985).”

“In either case, researchers should carefully design their studies and questions to mitigate potential subject bias [113] (e.”

“Similar to other self-administered questionnaires, it is crucial for researchers to determine strategies focused on mitigating social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985), such as including a separate socially desirable responding measure.”

“For additional approaches of coping with social desirability bias, see, e.g., Warner (1965), Paulhus (1981), Nederhof (1985), Krumpal (2013), Korndörfer et al. (2014).”

“Moreover, Nederhof (1985) clarifies that social desirability can originate from either self-deception or otherdeception and explains that if, as is the case here, its effects are found to be small, a potential source of bias can actually be considered to be eliminated.”

“Social desirability bias has been found to occur in virtually all types of self-reportingmeasures and across nearly all social sciences literatures (Fisher, 1993; King and Bruner, 2000; Leggett et al., 2003; Nederhof, 1985).”

“One of the limitations of self-reports of parenting practices is that they likely suffer from social desirability effects, that is, parents may be inclined to report that they engage in, more often than is actually the case, parenting practices that are perceived by them to be accepted or good ( Nederhof, 1985 ).”

“Among methods for circumventing such challenges (Hurlburt & Heavey, 2001; Nederhof, 2006), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a way of monitoring neural responses to persuasive messages in the moment that effects initially take hold (Lieberman, 2010).”

“Second, such measures are especially susceptible to response factors such as self-presentation and faking strategies (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960; Greenwald et al., 2002; Nederhof, 1985).”

“…opting for self-administered questionnaires to reduce interviewer-induced bias, selecting inter-viewers who match the demographic characteristics of the respondents to decrease response distortion, and using proxy subjects when direct questioning may lead to biased responses (see Nederhof, 1985).”

“To reduce this bias (a) we tried to word the questions in a neutral tone (Nederhof, 1985), and (b) we placed ‘sensitive’ measures (e.g. environmental attitudes, self-efficacy) after the ones capturing CER.”

“In general, social desirability could bias the validity of research findings that are based on survey data (Nederhof 1985).”

“Douglas N. Jackson and Victor R. Wroblewski”

“…been presented with all the evidence that Learning Styles are not effective, it seems reasonable to assume that some participants may succumb to some form of social desirability bias, wherein participants respond in the way that they perceive the researchers desire or expect (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Hence, social desirability bias should be controlled through routines that detect and prevent its occurrence (Nederhof 1985) and via deployment of divergent data sources within a study (Jo 2000).”

“This positive correlation is to be expected based on the prior theoretical discussion and usage of the social desirability scales (e.g. Nederhof, 1985), and we believe that the level of correlation provided, and the relatively low correlations with other focal constructs in the model, provides con…”

“unethical behaviour) given the likelihood of a social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985).”

“There can exist stark differences between what people claim they do and what they actually do [31].”

“Specifically, less error is associated with socially desirable responding when anonymity is assured (Bradburn, Sudman, & Associates, 1979; Nederhof, 1985; Wiseman, 1972). However, Zerbe and Paulhus (1987) argued that the context of administra-”

“Furthermore, they are alert to the possibility that the desire to be favorably evaluated may color respondents’ estimates (e.g., Nederhof 1985).”

“Therefore, respondents filled in the survey with honesty, which highly reduces the probability of social desirability bias (Nederhof 1985).”

“Our data may also contain some social desirability bias, or a tendency for survey participants to respond in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Social desirability refers to the notion by respondents that interviewers want some specifi c responses or that respondents want to present a better self-image of themselves (Nederhof 1985).”

“Socially desirable responding can account for anywhere from 10% to 75% of the overall variance of individuals’ responses (Nederhof, 1985) and thus it is a serious threat to the validity of self-reported data (Tan & Grace, 2008).”

“…bias among mothers appears to manifest itself as early as the pregnancy state of the mother-child relationship (van Bussel, Spitz, & Demyttenaere, 2010) and continues to influence mothers’ reporting throughout their children’s development and across a wide range of topics (Nederhof, 1985).”

“The validity of surveys and owner reports is a contentious issue: some argue that these assessments are unavoidably subjective (Duffy et al., 2008; Nederhof, 1985), while others contend that surveys are an acceptable method for assessing dog behavior (Block, 1961; Jones and Gosling, 2005).”

“If explicit questionnaires are used, other factors in addition to the self-concept of personality can influence the responses, for instance, self-presentation (Furnham, 1986; Nederhof, 1985).”

“The anonymous aspect of the survey may have reduced any social desirability bias [54].”

“The preservation of respondent anonymity and, if relevant, interviewer skills have been identified as adequate methods to manage the risk of social desirability (Nederhof 2006).”

“Social desirability bias, or providing survey responses that make the respondent look favorable to others, has been extensively documented in the field of survey methodology (see, for example, DeMaio, 1984; Nederhof, 1985), but has been little studied in the area of college student survey response.”

“As mentioned above, this discrepancy is probably primarily due to (a) under-reporting by gamblers due to the self-presentation bias that is more common in self-report data compared to data reported by others (Nederhof, 1985), and (b) censoring of the sample of affected others.”

“While spousal reports are not entirely unproblematic, we elected to use them to overcome some of the more idiosyncratic issues associated with self-report measures (Nederhof, 1983; Nix et al., 1999; Russell et al., 2003; C. Yang et al., 2004).”

“Absorption could also be related to demand effects (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964), socially-desirable responding (Nederhof, 1985), and a general acquiescence or response bias (Schriesheim & Hill, 1981).”

“Furthermore, and as recommended by Nederhof (1985), the respondents were systematically assured confidentiality and anonymity.”

“However, we followed recommendations to reduce social-desirability bias by ensuring participants’ anonymity [43].”