Cited by 2,340Survey Methodology and NonresponsePsychometric Methodologies and TestingSurvey Sampling and Estimation Techniques

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Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review

Nederhof, Anton J.·1985·European Journal of Social Psychology

DOI 10.1002/ejsp.2420150303

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Abstract

Social desirability is one of the most common sources of bias affecting the validity of experimental and survey research findings. From a self‐presentational perspective, social desirability can be regarded as the resultant of two separate factors: self‐deception and other‐deception. Two main modes of coping with social desirability bias are distinguished. The first mode comprises two methods aimed at the detection and measurement of social desirability bias: the use of social desirability scales, and the rating of item desirability. A second category comprises seven methods to prevent or reduce social desirability bias, including the use of forced‐choice items, the randomized response technique, the bogus pipeline, self‐administration of the questionnaire, the selection of interviewers, and the use of proxy subjects. Not one method was found to excel completely and under all conditions in coping with both other‐deceptive and self‐deceptive social desirability bias. A combination of prevention and detection methods offers the best choice available.

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“This is how the tendency towards social desirability is forged [28,29].”
Background
Islands of Deliberative Capacity in an Ocean of Authoritarian Control? The Deliberative Potential of Self-Organised Teams in Firms
Krüger, A. (2021) · Business Ethics Quarterly · doi:10.1017/beq.2021.39 · Cited by 17
Professors' Perceptions and Evaluations of Students Who Do and Do Not Stutter Following Oral Presentations
Werle, D., & Byrd, C. T. (2021) · Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools · doi:10.1044/2021_lshss-21-00069 · Cited by 14
Pandemic Politics in the United States: COVID‐19 as a New Type of Political Emergency
Sommer, U., & Rappel‐Kroyzer, O. (2021) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12792 · Cited by 17
‘Doctors can’t be doctors all of the time’: a qualitative study of how general practitioners and medical students negotiate public-professional and private-personal realms using social media
Marshal, M., Niranjan, V. R., Spain, E., MacDonagh, J., O’Doherty, J., O'Connor, R., & O’Regan, A. (2021) · BMJ Open · doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-047991 · Cited by 22
“…of the participants, which, on one hand, may exaggerate the propensity of participants to give socially desirable answers in the context of behaviour—a phenomenon known as social desirability bias 39 ; on the other hand, it may produce richer data due to the easy establishment of rapport and trust.”
Demographic and social correlates and indicators for behavioural compliance with personal protection among Chinese community-dwellers during COVID-19: a cross-sectional study
Xu, X., Chew, K. A., Xu, X., Wu, Z.-H., Xiao, X.-H., & Yang, Q. (2021) · BMJ Open · doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-041453 · Cited by 14
Training in health coaching skills for health professionals who work with people with progressive neurological conditions: A realist evaluation
Davies, F., Wood, F., Bullock, A. D., Wallace, C. A., & Edwards, A. (2020) · Health Expectations · doi:10.1111/hex.13071 · Cited by 16
“The evaluation of outcomes was limited to self-reported data and social desirability bias may have led to a tendency to positively evaluate the training and its impact on their clinical practice(52).”
Background
Examining tourist preferences to slow glacier loss: evidence from Alaska
Naald, B. V. (2020) · Tourism Recreation Resarch · doi:10.1080/02508281.2019.1606978 · Cited by 14
“First, WTP values are likely inflated due to the social desirability bias, which is the tendency of respondents in hypothetical studies to engage in pro-social behaviour by choosing the ‘correct’ answer (Dolnicar & Grün, 2013; Fisher, 1993; King & Bruner, 2000; Nederhof, 1985).”
Background
Traits of Volunteer Water Monitoring Programs that Influence Natural Resource Management and Policy Impacts
Stepenuck, K. F., & Genskow, K. D. (2018) · Society & Natural Resources · doi:10.1080/08941920.2018.1511022 · Cited by 17
“helped minimize social desirability bias (Nederhof 1985) and common method bias”
BackgroundMethod
Benefits for coteachers of students with disabilities: Do contextual factors matter?
Stefanidis, A., King‐Sears, M. E., & Brawand, A. (2018) · Psychology in the Schools · doi:10.1002/pits.22207 · Cited by 18
Direct Training to Increase Agreement Between Teachers’ and Observers’ Treatment Integrity Ratings
Fallon, L. M., Sanetti, L. M. H., Chafouleas, S. M., Faggella-Luby, M., & Briesch, A. (2018) · Assessment for Effective Intervention · doi:10.1177/1534508417738721 · Cited by 14
“Researchers have proposed ways to address the potential for socially desirable responding (e.g., create measures with forcedchoice responding, administer social desirability scales to detect such responding a priori; Nederhof, 1985); however studies of these methods have not yet extended to schools and teachers’ self-…”
Background
The impact of real-time business intelligence and advanced analytics on the behaviour of business decision makers
Delen, D., Moscato, G. F., & Toma, I. L. (2018) · International Conference on Information Management and Processing (ICIMP) · doi:10.1109/icimp1.2018.8325840 · Cited by 19
“One potentially important threat affecting the validity of experimental social science research findings is social desirability bias [43].”
Background
Gender and Policing Norms: Evidence from Survey Experiments among Police Officers in Uganda
Wagner, N., Rieger, M., Bedi, A., & Hout, W. (2017) · Journal of African Economies · doi:10.1093/jae/ejx014 · Cited by 14
Recognition Matters!
Shelef, N. G., & Zeira, Y. (2017) · doi:10.1177/0022002715595865 · Cited by 14
What Makes Employees Zealous Supporters of Their Firm’s CSR Initiative? The Role of Employees’ Perceptions of Their Firm’s CSR Authenticity
Yoon, J., & Lee, S. (2016) · Emerald Group Publishing Limited eBooks · doi:10.1108/s0882-614520160000033004 · Cited by 14
Environmental literacy in Madeira Island (Portugal): The influence of demographic variables
Spínola, H. (2016) · International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education · doi:10.18497/iejee-green.52941 · Cited by 14
“A special care was taken to overcome potential social desirability bias that could overcome in self-reported assessments (Nederhof, 1985).”
Background
Socially desirable responding and psychometric assessment of dynamic risk in sexual offenders against children
Stevens, C. D., Tan, L., & Grace, R. C. (2015) · Psychology Crime and Law · doi:10.1080/1068316x.2015.1120868 · Cited by 15
“denying those that are socially undesirable (Nederhof, 1985).”
Background
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Website Content Features Using Retrospective Pretest Methodology
Mueller, C. (2015) · Evaluation review · doi:10.1177/0193841x15582142 · Cited by 14
“Nevertheless, in order to deal with this issue appropriately, researchers should try to detect bias by using social desirability scales or apply methods capable of preventing social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985).”
Background
Hypermarkets in Oman: a study of consumers’ shopping preferences
Belwal, R., & Belwal, S. (2014) · doi:10.1108/ijrdm-02-2013-0043 · Cited by 14
“A similar trend has been observed in Egypt by Ramzy et al. (2011) regarding the growth of large supermarkets and the loss of domination by small retailers and where low-income residents are visiting the larger stores to benefit from the store’s economies of scale.”
BackgroundMethod
Population-based Estimates of Acute Gastrointestinal and Foodborne Illness in Barbados: A Retrospective Cross-sectional Study
Ingram, M. E., John, J. S. S., Applewhaite, T., Gaskin, P., Springer, K., & Indar, L. (2013) · Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition · doi:10.3329/jhpn.v31i4.2311 · Cited by 14
“The findings of this study should be interpreted in light of the following limitations: the literature shows that retrospective studies of self-reported acute gastrointestinal illness can be subject to recall bias and an overestimation of prevalence (24,30,31).”
Background
Genetic Influences on Implicit Measures of Personality
Osinsky, R., Alexander, N., Schmitz, A., Kuepper, Y., Müller, E. A., Beer, L., Koeppe, L., & Hennig, J. (2010) · Journal of Individual Differences · doi:10.1027/1614-0001/a000007 · Cited by 11
“For instance, self-reports merely deliver information that is introspectively accessible (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), and because people have reflective access to the information they give in such measures, conscious response strategies are a serious threat to validity (Nederhof, 1985).”
Background
Participation with online recovery specific groups - findings from the UK Life in Recovery survey 2015
Graham, S., Irving, J., Cano, I., & Edwards, M. (2018) · Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly · doi:10.1080/07347324.2018.1500873 · Cited by 13
“First, although much of the content of recovery websites is heterogeneous (e.g., National Institute on Drug Abuse, SAMSHA), the key benefits are flexibility and ease of access for busy people.”
Influential
Speaking ‘Tinglish’: a bridge or barrier?
Boonsuk, Y. (2025) · Language Awareness · doi:10.1080/09658416.2025.2556932 · Cited by 13
“This dynamic presents the possibility of response bias or social desirability bias (Bergen & Labonté, 2020; Fisher, 1993; nederhof, 1985; Piedmont and (pp, 2024).”
Using semantic similarity to measure the echo of strategic communications
Cann, T. J. B., Dennes, B., Coan, T. G., O'Neill, S., & Williams, H. T. P. (2025) · EPJ Data Science · doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-025-00538-w · Cited by 13
“Despite this, the impact of survey eﬀects (and in particular social desirability bias in polarised contexts [19]) mean that scholarly eﬀorts would be enhanced by tools to study message eﬀectiveness in real-world settings.”
The impact of knowledge inertia on process tailoring in the dynamic development of software projects in Chinese industries
Lee, J.-C., & Chen, C. (2023) · Information and Software Technology · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107337 · Cited by 13
When Workers Feel Like Objects: A Field Study on Self-Objectification and Affective Organizational Commitment
Valtorta, R., & Monaci, M. (2023) · Europe's Journal of Psychology · doi:10.5964/ejop.5549 · Cited by 13
“However, it should be noted that our measure assessed this association using a self-report scale, which may have been affected by the participants’ desirabili ty concerns (e.g., Crowne & Marlowe, 1964; Nederhof, 1985).”
Method
Reactions to Fact Checking
Appling, S., Bruckman, A., & de Choudhury, M. (2022) · Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact. · doi:10.1145/3555128 · Cited by 13
“It’s important to note that the answers of all of our subjects likely exhibited social desirability bias to varying degrees [31].”
Background
Pre-stroke socioeconomic status predicts upper limb motor recovery after inpatient neurorehabilitation
Wolf, S., Holm, S. E., Ingwersen, T., Bartling, C., Bender, G., Birke, G., Meyer, A., Nolte, A., Ottes, K., Pade, O., et al. (2022) · Annals of Medicine · doi:10.1080/07853890.2022.2059557 · Cited by 15
The surgical resident experience in serious illness communication: A qualitative needs assessment with proposed solutions
Lin, J. A., Im, C., O’Sullivan, P., Kirkwood, K. S., & Cook, A. C. (2021) · The American Journal of Surgery · doi:10.1016/j.amjsurg.2021.09.013 · Cited by 16
Multiple-Instance Learning from Similar and Dissimilar Bags
Feng, L., Shu, S.-L., Cao, Y.-Z., Tao, L., Wei, H., Xiang, T., An, B., & Niu, G. (2021) · Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining · doi:10.1145/3447548.3467318 · Cited by 13
“However, it could be difficult to collect such fully labeled data, due to high labeling costs [54], privacy considerations [45], and social bias [36].”
Background
Retail inventory shrinkage, sensing weak security breach signals, and organizational structure
Su, H., Rungtusanatham, M. J., & Linderman, K. (2021) · Decision Sciences · doi:10.1111/deci.12524 · Cited by 19
An Immersive Serious Game for the Behavioral Assessment of Psychological Needs
Giglioli, I. A. C., Carrasco-Ribelles, L. A., Parra, E., Marín‐Morales, J., & Alcañíz, M. (2021) · Applied Sciences · doi:10.3390/app11041971 · Cited by 18
“Finally, they are also presenting biases, such as the social desirability bias that is the tendency of self-reported respondents to answer questions in accordance with socially favorable norms to maintain a socially favorable self-presentation, affecting responses veracity [33,34].”
Background
Faking self-reports of health behavior: a comparison between a within- and a between-subjects design
Egele, V. S., Kiefer, L. H., & Stark, R. (2021) · Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine · doi:10.1080/21642850.2021.1991803 · Cited by 14
“…documented that people sometimes alter their responses to benefit from the creation of the desired impression (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960; Edwards, 1957; Furnham, 1986; Locander, Sudman, & Bradburn, 1976; Mazar & Ariely., 2006; McCrae & Costa, 1983; Mensch & Kandel, 1988; Nederhof, 1985; Norman, 1967).”
Background
Shades of silence: Why subsidiary managers remain silent vis-à-vis their headquarters
Sarabi, A. (2020) · Journal of World Business · doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2020.101147 · Cited by 16
Exploring the social coherence of rural landscapes featuring agroforestry intercropping systems using locals’ visual assessments and perceptions
Laroche, G., Domon, G., & Olivier, A. (2020) · Sustainability Science · doi:10.1007/s11625-020-00837-3 · Cited by 18
“Residents were asked to give their email addresses to receive the online survey link, leaving them free to participate and limiting the desirability bias associated with face-to-face questionnaire (Nederhof 1985).”
Background
Exploring the Structure of Teachers’ Emotional Labor in the Classroom: A Multitrait–Multimethod Analysis
Wang, H., Hall, N. C., Chiu, M. M., Goetz, T., & Gogol, K. (2020) · Educational Measurement Issues and Practice · doi:10.1111/emip.12353 · Cited by 14
The right to the virtual city: Rural retreatism in open-world video games
Denham, J., & Spokes, M. (2020) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444820917114 · Cited by 13
A reporting guideline for IS survey research
Hui, W., Siu, M.-L., & Lau, W.-K. (2019) · Decision Support Systems · doi:10.1016/j.dss.2019.113136 · Cited by 13
Lifestyle behavior among lymphoma survivors after high-dose therapy with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, assessed by patient-reported outcomes
Bersvendsen, H. S., Haugnes, H. S., Fagerli, U., Fluge, Ø., Holte, H., Smeland, K. B., Wilsgaard, T., & Kiserud, C. E. (2019) · Acta Oncologica · doi:10.1080/0284186x.2018.1558370 · Cited by 17
“At surveys, people tend to present a favorable image of themselves, and the finding of only 5% reporting an unhealthy alcohol consumption might be underestimated due to this social desirability bias in selfreports [31].”
Background
Psychiatrists' opinion towards medication discontinuation in remitted first‐episode psychosis: A multi‐site study of the Asian Network for Early Psychosis
Hui, C., Wong, A. K., Leung, W., Lee, E., Chan, S., Chang, W., Chen, E., Chan, T. C., Swapna, V., Tagata, H., et al. (2018) · Early Intervention in Psychiatry · doi:10.1111/eip.12765 · Cited by 13
“Furthermore, self-report questionnaire responses may be subject to biases like the social desirability bias (Nederhof, 1985).”
Background
Exploring how end-of-life management is taught to Australasian veterinary students. Part 1: technical euthanasia
Littlewood, K., Beausoleil, N., Stafford, K., Stephens, C., Collins, T., Fawcett, A., Hazel, S., Lloyd, J. K. F., Mallia, C., Richards, L., et al. (2018) · The Veterinary Record · doi:10.1136/vr.104775 · Cited by 13
Instruction-prompted objective behaviors as proxy for subjective measures in a driving simulator
Lee, Y.-C., & LaVoie, N. (2018) · doi:10.1016/j.trf.2018.03.002 · Cited by 13
“Self-reports can also be biased because some participants might engage in socially desirable responding (SDR), that is, a tendency to give answers that make the respondent look good (Nederhof, 1985; Paulhus & Reid, 1991).”
Background
The Mediating Effect of Childcare Teacher's Job Stress on the Relationship Between Grit and Turnover Interntion
Shin, Y., Koo, M., & Park, D. (2018) · Korean Journal of Child Studies · doi:10.5723/kjcs.2018.39.2.15 · Cited by 12
Testing the effects of explicit and implicit bidimensional attitudes on objectively measured speeding behaviour
McCartan, R., Elliott, M. A., Pagani, S., Finnegan, E., & Kelly, S. W. (2018) · British Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1111/bjso.12255 · Cited by 15
“All attitude items were presented in a pseudo-random order,with the response scales reversed for half the items to reduce response set bias (e.g., Nederhof, 1985).”
Method

Authors: Nederhof, A. J.
Corresponding author: Nederhof, Anton J.
Venue: European Journal of Social Psychology
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 1985-07
Volume: 15
Issue: 3
Pages: 263-280
ISSN: 0046-2772 (ISSN-L)
1099-0992
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2420150303
OpenAlex: W2046622454
Cited by: 2,340
References: 0
Citations by year: 2026: 159 · 2025: 218 · 2024: 182 · 2023: 188 · 2022: 175 · 2021: 186 · 2020: 162 · 2019: 144 · 2018: 134 · 2017: 109 · 2016: 100 · 2015: 114 · 2014: 97 · 2013: 68 · 2012: 60
FWCI: 21.96
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: closed
Licence: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor, 7541 d)
Locations: European Journal of Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
Topics: Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Survey Sampling and Estimation Techniques
Keywords: social desirability bias, self-presentation, self-deception, Social Desirability Scale, randomized response, bogus pipeline, self-administered questionnaire, bias detection, bias prevention

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Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review

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