Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review

“Limitations to this study include a potential for PCMHI providers to over-report their behaviors on the PPAQ in order to appear highly adherent due to social desirability bias [34], despite the anonymity of our survey approach.”

“Social desirability bias, which means the tendency of respondents to fill in questionnaires in a manner that is viewed favorably by others, would affect the validity of using questionnaires as a research method (Nederhof 1985).”

“The construct has evolved over time and has been used to indicate either 1) a characteristic of certain items or tests (“fake ability”) that should be corrected (Nederhof, 1985), or 2) an individual response set that is characterized by underreporting of negative aspects to obtain approval and acceptance from others (…”

“Psychologists were given the following definition of social desirability: responding in a manner which "leaves a favorable impression on you the respondent, upon the person who reads the response(s)" ( Nederhof, 1985 ).”

“Virtually all significant associations were with other self-report instruments, prone to a variety of potential biases, such as social desirability, or the effect of transient mood.(79,80) The Feeling Loved questionnaire assesses only two of several domains that could be considered to be within the dominion of love, a…”

“To address issues of social desirability bias, researchers may account for the effects of social desirability using items or scales created to measure an individual’s level of social desir ability (Nederhof 1985).”

“, a technique proven to reduce social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985).”

“These practices encouraged the respondents to fill out the questionnaire honestly (Nederhof, 1985; Lee et al., 2021a, b).”

“Fourth, we employed constructs that are not very likely to give the respondents a reason to believe that some answers are more desirable than others (Nederhof 1985).”

“Although selfreported data must be interpreted with caution because of the potential social desirability bias [41], irregular tooth brushing and reduced consumption of sugars are highly expected observations in a setting of political crisis and civil wars [21, 25, 42].”

“Detailed discussion on how to remedy for these two biases are presented by [68,69].”

“Whilst focus groups have their advantages, it was necessary to consider social desirability bias, or the ‘tendency to say things which place the speaker in a favourable light’ (Nederhof 1985: 264).”

“Although self-report measures are widely used in social and behavioral science research, they have been criticized for social desirability bias and acquiescence bias (see Nederhof 1985).”

“Efforts to detect intentional distortions in substance use survey research have ranged from directly measuring participants’ social desirability (Nederhof, 1985), using external stimuli to promote truthful responding, such as the bogus pipeline technique (Roese and Jamieson, 1993), or including…”

“In this case it lead to discover that the non-solvers are influenced by the social desirability bias: non-participants define intrinsic motivations that are considered socially acceptable, to project a favourable image of themselves to others (Maccoby and Maccoby, 1954; Crowne and Marlowe, 1964; Thomas and Kilmann, 19…”

“Social desirability reflects the tendency on behalf of the subjects to deny socially undesirable traits and to claim socially desirable ones, and the tendency to say things which place the speaker in a favourable light (Nederhof 1985).”

“At this point it becomes clear already that when both the individual disposition of the respondent and the specific item content potentially trigger SDR, a possible measure or control instrument for SDR must incorporate both sources (Nederhof 1985).”

“The open-ended questionnaire was selected over interviews to minimize effects of social desirability bias ( Nederhof 1985 ).”

“However, social desirability bias may occur when administering the questionnaire and conducting the survey (Nederhof, 1985; van de Mortel, 2008).”

“Lastly, as the ERI and PROQOL questionnaires rely on self-reported data, there is also the risk of reporting biases due to social desirability or affectivity [33], although this was mitigated by the fact that questionnaires were anonymous and self-administered [76].”

“Anyhow, self-report measures are at risk of subjective bias (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Surveys of legislators can instead be used to elicit the legislator’s opinions on what they believe is effective in changing their political decisions (Cluverius, 2017; Hooghe and Marien, 2012), but results from these investigations may be subject to social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Nederhof (1985) describes socially desirable responses (SDR) as a trend of respondents to participate in the survey such that respondents may compromise the validity of the questionnaire.”

“Similarly, debates about whether agreement with socially desirable items reflects substance or bias can be seen in multiple personality literatures including discussion of impression management scales (de Vries et al., 2014; Nederhof, 1985; Paulhus, 1984; Uziel, 2010), personality modeling (Anglim et al.”

“The questionnaire packet was self-administered, with no identifiable information collected, reducing the likelihood of participants giving a socially desirable response (Nederhof, 1985; Salant & Dillman, 1994).”

“Prior research with intervieweradministrated questionnaires, as opposed to our anonymized online survey, may result in social desirability response bias [15], where the respondent seeks to please the interviewer and not provide responses that are counter to the interviewer’s desire.”

“…to prevailing social norms and, more specifically, to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others (King and Bruner, 2000; Nederhof, 1985). violence, broadly defined as “noxious symbolic messages containing criticism, insults, cursing, or a negative affective reaction”…”

“Another potential limitation of our study is that surveys are susceptible to social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985) and this bias may be especially strong in entrepreneurship where social consideration is paramount.”

“Social desirability reflects the subject’s tendency to deny socially undesirable traits and to claim socially desirable ones (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Social desirability bias describes the tendency for participants to respond in a socially desirable manner rather than dictating to the interviewer what is actually the case (Nederhof 2006).”

“Second, our findings may be subject to social desirability bias [78].”

“In addition, self-reported data inherently carries the risk of social desirability bias, where participants may have provided responses they believed were more acceptable rather than their genuine views [111].”

“When they are interviewed in settings with less privacy and researchers ask direct questions about sensitive issues, participants may be guarded in their responses (DeKeseredy et al., 2020; Grimm, 2010; Nederhof, 1985), or social-desirability effects may be increased (Fine & Elsbach, 2000).”

“To address the social desirability issue, the study participants were informed and assured about the survey’s confidentiality, anonymity, and academic nature (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Whilst beneficial in consulting a plurality of voices, FGDs present disadvantages such as the intersectional nature of the group’s composition (Merryweather, 2010), dominant voices driving conversations (Stokes & Bergin, 2006) and social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985).”

“As with any study that gathers information primarily by self-report, there is the danger that respondents may provide socially desirable responses (Nederhof, 1985), and it is possible that this may have affected mothers’ report of how much time their child spent engaging with screens.”

“As social scientists have long lamented, social desirability bias tends to disguise the genuine prevalence of socially sensitive attitudes, especially on matters of race (Blair et al., 2020; Nederhof, 1985).”

“Social desirability bias is the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Verzerrungen durch soziale Erwünschtheit haben auf Fragebögen einen stärkeren Einfluss als auf Tests (Nederhof, 1985).”

“…participants little time to deliberate, and it does not directly ask participants for their beliefs and motivations, but infers them from the choices participants make, thereby reducing social desirability bias (the tendency to select responses that show the participant in a good light [30]).”

“Anglers response to belief statements may have been influenced by a desirability bias, where respondents answer inaccurately to represent themselves in the most socially correct or acceptable way [46].”

“Finally, as changes in behaviour were assessed by self-report, social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985) may have played a role, especially for self-reports of non-validated measures of improved communication and coping skills.”

“Socially desirable responding is a common response bias that reflects tendencies to provide favorable responses with respect to norms and standards ( Nederhof 1985 ).”

“For example, when collecting the survey data, we ensured the confidentiality of participants’ responses, emphasized the importance of honest answers, disguised the purpose of the research, and measured key variables at different time points (Larson, 2019; Nederhof, 1985).”

“One interpretation of such findings is that respondents might be affected by social desirability bias where they tend to ascribe themselves to traits that are socially desirable (Hoffmann & Musch, 2019; Nederhof, 1985).”

“…self-completion methodology, use of a participant identification number, and specification (in the cover letter) that survey completion implies informed consent (in lieu of a signed consent) were additional methods used to minimize time constraints and maximize completion flexibility [104].”

“…suggest to explore anger further in an experimental design that comprises prevention and detection of social desirability methods or indirect questioning, which are also valid measures employed to reduce social desirability biases (Nederhof, 1985; Fisher and Katz, 1993; Weydmann et al., 2020).”

“High life satisfaction is not uncommon in survey data due to the influence of social desirability and self-selection (Diener, 1994; Cummins, 2003), although self-administration (used in the FNES) attenuates socially desirable response bias (Nederhof, 1985).”

“The design intentionally minimizes these effects using several established strategies (Nederhof 1985).”

“This can probably be attributed to people ’ s tendency to answer questions regarding misconduct in a socially desirable way, resulting in low prevalence rates of enactment of bullying (Nederhof, 1985).”

“Social desirability bias, coupled with the fear of being caught, often causes violators to behave covertly, with reluctance to speak openly about wrongdoing (Nederhof, 1985; Gavin et al., 2009).”